A Stark In Sokovia
by chimerical.quaintrelle
Summary: Tony has gone to great lengths to keep the identify of his sister a secret. Now she's in Sokovia where she meets the Maximoff twins, who hate Stark more than anyone else. It's a touchy situation, indeed.
1. Chapter 1

The explosions were how I knew it had finally begun. The air of tension had been slowly worsening for days now, the government promising to make changes and the people not believing and demanding more. Up until now there was still a chance for the whole thing to blow over, but that's not why I was sent here.

We knew how this was going to go.

"Come on, Syd, we need to get the cameras rolling and get out there." My colleague, Sean prompts me in his posh London accent.

"I'm ready. Let's go." I blink rapidly to activate the contact lenses that function as a camera. Sean wears glasses that serve the same purpose. When in high conflict areas, it helps to keep a low profile.

I lean against the door and listen, not hearing anything close by. I nod at Sean, and he nods back, yanking open the doorknob he had his hand on the whole time.

I run out the door into the street, hugging the walls of the building and keeping an eye out for any rioters or police headed this way.

once the door was opened the sounds became exponentially louder. Smoke rose from the square a block away and people started trickling in, a few at first, running into their homes and seeking safety behind walls. As we made our way towards the action the crowds grew stronger, some running away from the conflict and some running towards it, trying to get closer and make their mark.

Sean and I were one of those running towards the tumult. But not for the same reasons. As foreigners, a reporter and volunteer medic, we were strictly forbidden to take any part in the riots, on either side. His job is to film the event and then write a report on it, and mine is to offer assistance to anyone, wherever possible, no matter where their allegiance lay.

It looked like a warzone, and for all intents and purposes it was. But as with all riots or protests, there is a great imbalance of power. The civilians may have strength in numbers and surprise, often able to overwhelm police with sheer force, but that kind of power doesn't last long. Without gear equal to what he opposing side has, any victory is short lived.

In this case, once the people started getting an advantage, the police brought out tear gas and started firing it into the crowds. The rioters disperse immediately, trying to escape the poison threatening to overtake their lungs and eyes.

I pull my shirt over my mouth, trying to filter out some of the gas, hoping the contacts will keep the smoke out of my eyes. Through the fog I see two unlucky people trapped in the assault, the man pulling a cloth over the woman's face and trying to pull her away from the assault at cost to himself.

"This way!" I say, running towards them and taking his arm. I lead them away from the gas back towards the small room Sean and I rented before the riots began. Sean follows behind, eyes glued on the square and filming as much of the action as possible.

I fumble with the keys, starting to cough and feeling my eyes succumbing to the effects of the gas. Finally the door relents and swings open, offering refuge from the city streets. I guide the two Sokovians inside, leading the temporarily blinded male to a chair while the woman cautiously removes the fabric from her face. She sniffles slightly, trying to clear her lungs while the other contort his face in agony.

"Thank you." She says in her distinct accent.

"of course." I reply, handing her a bottle of water. She accepts it and takes a large drink, no doubt feeling better and finding relief for the burning effects of the gas.

I pry the man's hands from his face and put them around another bottle of water. "Drink this, it will help." I tell him. He obediently raises the bottle to his mouth with shaking hands and downs half of it in one sitting. He leans back after, then starts rubbing at his face again. I pull his hands away once again.

"Stop. That will only make it worse. You need to rinse your eyes out completely. What is your name?"

"Pietro. And my sister, Wanda."

I smile at his sister and then tell them, "My name is Sydney. I'm with the Global Assistance Outreach And Aid program. I'm here to help you in any way I can. Pietro, you were hit the worst. Come with me." I take his hands again and pull him up, guiding him to the small sink on the other side of the room.

"To get all the chemicals out, you have to hold your face under running water for at least three minutes. It's going to hurt, worse than it does now. But if you don't do this, it will last much longer. Are you ready?"

"Yes," he says, trying to show a brave face. I guide his hands to the edge of the sink and turn the tap on.

"Easy," I say as he lowers his face to the water. Once he opens his eyes to the water he makes more painful sounds, but there's nothing else I can do to help with that.

While he stands there I approach his sister Wanda, who is watching with much concern from the chair on the other side of the room.

"Hi." I say softly. "How are you feeling now? Are your eyes burning still?"

She shakes her head. "Not bad. I can manage. Will Pietro be okay?"

I rummage around in my bag as I answer. "He will be fine. The gas isn't meant to cause long term damage. Only enough to act as a deterrent. He should be better in the morning." I hand her a bottle of visine. "use a few drops of these, it will take the remainder of the chemicals away."

"Why did you not use this for my brother?" She asks as she takes the bottle from me, keen eyes studying every action I make.

"It was too severe,"I shake my head. "This wouldn't be enough to get it out." My timer goes off and I jump up and rush to the sink, turning off the tap aways landed grabbing a towel.

"How is that, did that help?" I ask as I dab the towel at Pietro's face.

"Better," he says, taking the towel from me and standing up straight. I take in his appearance for the first time now. Tall, lean body, messy overlong brown hair, hint of a beard on his face. Not a bad package, but I force myself to stop thinking that way before I end up living up to my brother's reputation.

"Come on, let's get you sitting down." I say, leading him back to the couch.

"Thank you, again." He says as he leans back and rests his head on the back of the couch. "Both of us would would be a lot worse off without you."

"That's what I'm here for." I say, getting an ice pack together. "Put this on your face, it will help keep the swelling down." he reaches around in the air, and I put the pack in front of his hands. He awkwardly grabs it and holds it to his face, taking deep breaths that I interpret as relief.

"What's your name? He asks.

"Sydney." I say.

"You are American?" His sister pipes up from her chair.

"Yes," I say cautiously, noticing that Sean has his glasses back on and is filming what's happening in the room. I scowl at him, mentally commanding him to turn it off, but he just shrugs and sits back in his chair further.

"What are you doing here?" Wanda asks, narrowing her eyes and studying me closer.

"I, uh- what do you mean exactly?"

"Here, Sokovia. Not exactly a prime vacation." It's as I suspected. Many Sokovians are distrustful or outright hateful to Americans, especially my family. If they knew who I really was… I don't even care to speculate.

I cast another warning glance at Sean, then give her a watered down version of the truth. "We caught wind of the social and political unrest brewing, and came here in case any riots broke out, like they did, so we could offer assistance, like we are. Your people have been through so much, and if helping to bring peace means pulling two kids off the street for the night, then that's something I'm willing to do."

"Most people wouldn't." She says.

"Well, I'm not most people."

"And what about him? All he's done is sit and watch."

"His… method is slightly different than mine. He…" I struggle with how to tell them without offending or distancing them.

"I'm a journalist with the Rising Tide." He jumps in, seeing my hesitation. Exactly what I was trying not to say.

"A journalist?" Pietro scoffs. "What good is that to us?"

"Get some light on the situation, on your struggles, and show the world, and I guarantee you'll have more help than two backpackers with a medkit and laptop."

"From who? America already sent their 'help.' China doesn't see a profit. Russia's struggling themselves. Austria will only help if we secede to them. This is a small country with not much to offer. Nobody is willing to help."

"People love a good sob story. At any rate, what do you have to lose?"

"Listen here, you-"

"Okay, that's enough. Let's talk more about this later, shall we?" I say, getting up and snatching the ice pack away from Pietro with a little too much force. I was only intending to check the swelling.

He looks at me in shock when I do, staring at the ice pack in my hand. He glances up at my face and I pull his chin closer, feeling the skin around his eyes for puffiness (they are very puffy), redness (like a fire truck), and damage to the eye itself. I have to get very close for this, and he still seems to be in a state of shock, so he doesn't protest.

"Hmm…" I say, grabbing a flashlight from my kit and checking the response. "How do you feel now?"

"Um… better." He says in a small voice, erupting into a cough after. Wanda snorts, and I look at her in time to see her shake her head a little.

I get up and grab some ibuprofen from my kit and give one to each of the siblings with a water bottle. "Take this, and keep drinking water. I'm sorry, there's not much else I can do to help."

"No, you've already helped more than we ever expect. We should go soon, try to get home as soon as possible." Wanda says, rising from her chair.

"You're welcome to stay here tonight. The riots are still going on. It's not safe."

"Syd, they probably have family to get back to." Sean chastises.

"No, we're all that's left of our family." Wanda explains, sitting back down.

"Our parents died when we were ten." Pietro goes on, lifting his gaze from the floor to me. "One of Stark's weapons in our apartment. We only survived because it malfunctioned."

I feel sick. Stark, of Stark Industries. My brother, Tony.

Stark weapons do not malfunction.

Besides that, why were they fired on a civilian zone in the first place? And how did a piece of Stark tech end up in this country? Things don't add up.

"You look horrified." Wanda says, and I snap out of my little moment. "But this is something that occurs every day."

"Are there still Stark weapons here?" I ask, subconsciously hushing my voice.

Sean leans in, and I'm sure his camera is still running. I have to keep him from airing this, somehow.

"Who knows? That was over ten years ago. Maybe they were all used up, maybe there are more. We never know until the bomb lands at our feet."

Something inside me snaps. "I'm going to do everything I can to help. I have some connections, some people I can call."

"No, please don't." Wanda says. "We do not need any more assistance. We are very grateful for what you have done for us tonight, but dragging more people into it will only cause more problems." Right, plus I'm American. _And a Stark…_

"Okay," I lie. The sounds intensify from outside and just feel helpless, wishing I could do more. At least I helped these two.

Pietro gets up and takes a radio down from the dresser, puts it on a chair in front of the couch, and plops down. Wanda gets up and sits next to him, burrowing into his shoulder. He takes her in, putting on the protective big brother act perfectly. It looks so foreign to me, but so natural on them. Tony was never good at showing affection.

Wanda picks up the radio and scans through the stations, some music, some newscast, in varying languages. She stops on one and cocks her ear towards it, listening intently. Pietro sits up straight and mirrors her stance.

" _Unruhen zu. Brauchen Sie, um schnell zu bewegen und schließen Sie die Grenze. Vollsperrung von Morgen."_ My German is a bit rusty, but I can pick out a few words. 'unrest,' 'border,' 'tomorrow.'

"You two need to leave." Pietro says, standing up and putting the radio on the chair again. "If you don't leave now, you may never get another chance."

"Why, what's wrong?" My stomach turns in knots.

"Austria is closing the border with Sokovia and locking us in. Tomorrow. You'll be trapped here."

"What about the Czech? We can get out that way." Sean says, pulling out his laptop and starting it. "We can get resources in here…"

Pietro mutters something in Sokovian before continuing. "No, there's no time. And dragging more people into this is not good. We _just_ discussed that."

"Sean, please. He's right."

"No. Things are just winding up. They'll settle in a few days. Like always."

"This time is different." Wanda says. "Ever since the people in black came. Sokovia will not be invaded again."

"People in black? Who are they?" Sean asks, typing something on his laptop.

"Don't know. They came in a week ago and took up in one of the old camps on the mountain. Just sitting there."

"This might be the clue we need to getting the whole story."

"Sean, will you just-"

"No idea at all who they are?"

"Sean."

"Could you show me where this place is tomorrow?"

" _Sean!_ " I snap. He glares at me, but shuts up and ignores me after that.

"It would take a few hours to walk to the border. Too dangerous after dark. We'll have to stay here tonight." Pietro says. "I can sleep on the floor."

"There's no need for that. The couch folds out. If you don't mind sharing, it will fit both of you."

"We shared a womb for nine months, I think we can handle a bed for one night."

"You're twins?" I ask. I hadn't realized. They nod.

"I'm the oldest!" Pietro says smugly.

"By twelve minutes." Wanda says flatly. This must be a common subject among them.

"Twelve minutes is twelve minutes."

"Go to bed, you idiot."

I smile to myself and drag the futon out of the corner, making it up and getting ready to make an attempt at sleep despite the ruckus right outside the window.

"What you doing?" Pietro asks, watching me from the couch.

"Getting ready for bed." I say. Isn't that obvious?

"On the convertible?"

"I called dibs." Sean says, never looking away from his screen.

"No gentleman I know would let a lady sleep on a convertible."

"Shut your face, you twat." Still not looking up from the screen. He says it with a fake smile.

"How'd you end up with him?" Pietro whispers at me. I shrug. He smiles. Once the futon is set up at the end of the couch I hit the light switch and let the sounds of war lull me to sleep.

"Sydney." I groan and roll over.

"Sydney." Something touches my shoulder.

"Sydney." My body starts shaking.

"Good god, what is it?"

"It's time to leave. If we don't go now, you'll be stuck here."

That makes me sit straight up in bed and almost clash heads with Pietro.

"Sorry," We say at the same time. I swing my legs over the bed and stand up, very stiff from the cold night. And I was right next to the heater in the room. How the twins have survived this long on their own, I have no idea.

"Are they getting up?" I ask of Wanda and Sean.

"Wanda is staying here. As for your friend…" He looks over at the bed which I realize to be empty.

"What? Where is he?"

"I do not know. He was gone when I awoke."

"Alright, fine, he's on his own. I'm done with him." I aggressively pack up my few remaining things and put the futon away.

Pietro watches a few steps away, concerned look on his face. "He's not worth your time."

"I wish I had known that two years ago." I shrug my backpack onto my shoulders. "Ready?"

He nods. "Let me just-" He leans over Wanda, who stirs, and whispers something to her. I want to give her a proper goodbye, but she looks so peaceful there. Pietro will relay my regards to her.

The streets are quiet, but a sinister kind of quiet. Glass, blood, and ash cover the streets as evidence of last night's snafu. Smoke still rises from the square, which Pietro takes care to avoid.

I almost lose him in the tangle of streets, and I panic for a moment. Lost in the city without my guide or my partner. A touchy situation, indeed.

When someone touches my back I jump, but quickly calm down once I see who it is.

"Stay close, no? We don't have much time." He reaches down for my hand and resorts to pulling me along through the streets.

His hands are cold.

He takes me up a mountain pass outside the city, and from there I can see all of Sokovia before me. It's beautiful from here, standing strong and proud in the sunlight. And just to the north, a structure in the mountain. I can't make anything out from here, but smoke rises from the central building.

"The newcomers?" I ask.

"Yeah. Don't know what they want. Guess we'll find out. Come on, we're almost there."

Another mile or so is a chain fence across the pass with signs affixed to it in varying places and languages. The fence itself is in rough space, coming apart and not offering much in the way of resistance. Pietro pulls one corner away and shooes me through the opening.

He leans up against the fence and whispers, "This road loops around. There is a town south of here. Go right, and you shouldn't meet anyone on the road. Don't travel on the road itself if you can help it, just in sight of it. If anyone does come, just hide until they go by. I wish I could do more for you, after you've helped us."

"I wish I could do more for _you_ ," I whisper back, not wanting to go now that the time is here. "Couldn't you come with me? Go get Wanda and- I wish she had come with us."

"It is nice of you, but it is impossible. We must stay and do what we can to help our people."

"Well then I could stay and-"

"No, we've been through that. This is the right path for you." I don't move, I just stand there, taking in every inch of him and committing him to memory. Someday, if I can return, I will find them again. I make that a promise to myself.

"Go!" He yells, banging his hand on the fence and startling me into action. I tear off across the road into the bushes on the other side. Just in time, I realize, hearing the sound of approaching motors. I crouch in the evergreens and watch, wanting to make sure Pietro gets away, but by the time I look back he's already gone.

I run down the mountain towards the town, and I don't see anyone else until I get inside. I run for the first payphone, but hesitate over the number to push in.

It rings three times.

" _Hello? Who is this?_ "

"Rhodey," I say, leaning against the wall.

" _Who is this? How did you get this number?_ "

"Come on, you can't have forgotten me that quickly. It's only been a year since Tony had heart surgery."

" _Sydney?_ "

"Atta boy."

" _What's the scoop?_ "

"I need a favour…"


	2. Chapter 2

"Tony watch out there's a-" I start to warn, but too late. He collides with the energy barrier, yelling out a few curses in response.

"Language!" Cap chastises over the comms. "Jarvis, what's the view from upstairs?"

" _The central building is protected by some kind of energy shield. Strucker's technology is well beyond any other Hydra base we've taken._ " Jarvis says, eyeing everything from the satellite in orbit.

"Sydney," Tony scolds.

"I was in the process of telling you. I can't tell what's inside until you get that barrier down." I move across the Quinjet to another console and set it up to do a background scan.

"Loki's scepter must be here. Strucker couldn't mount this defense without it."

"Thor's right," I say. "The energy from the HYDRA gear matches the ambient radiation the scepter emits. Their weapons are definitely powered by it."

"At long last." Thor muses.

"At long last is lasting a little long, boys." Natasha quips amid the sound of punching bodies.

"Yeah. I think we've lost the element of surprise." Clint adds.

"Wait a second. No one else is going to deal with the fact that Cap just said 'language?'" Tony says. I snicker.

"I know, I know. It just slipped out." Cap says.

Tony sends in the Iron Legion to keep the city safe, and I monitor the droids' status. Some get hit, and I know this is not going well.

"We have an enhanced in the field." Cap says over the comms. I slide over to the pilot's seat and activate a biometrics sensor. It's just a prototype, but in some cases it can distinguish an enhanced.

"Clint's hit!" Natasha says. "Somebody want to deal with that bunker? Thank you."

"How bad is he?" I say directly to Natasha's earpiece.

"Not good. I can't tell yet. Looks like he took a beam to his side. glancing blow, thankfully. I'm heading back to you."

"I'll come to you and see if I can stabilize him." I say, grabbing my old backpack and medkit and rushing out of the quinjet.

"No, stay there and warm up the engines. As soon as the scepter is secured, we need to go."

"Copy that, I say, turning back to the jet.

"Stark, we're going to need to get inside." Steve says, sounding more tense now.

"I'm closing in. Jarvis, Syd, am I? Closing in?"

"Tony, the shield is still up!" I warn.

"You see a power source for that shield?"

" _There's a pathway, below the north tower._ " Jarvis says.

"Great, I wanna poke it with something." Out the front window I can see Tony fire a flare into the ground and the shield go down. "Drawbridge is down, people."

"The enhanced?" Thor asks.

"He's a blur. All the new player's we've faced, I've never seen this. In fact, I still haven't." Cap says.

"Clint's hit pretty bad, guys. We're gonna need evac." Nat says.

"Engines are almost at peak. I can come get you."

"I can get Barton to the jet. The sooner we're gone the better. You and Stark secure the scepter." There's a blast which I can see from the jet, flatting a few trees and causing an explosion. "Find the scepter!" Thor takes off into the sky.

"And for gosh sake, watch your language!" Tony sasses.

"That's not going away anytime soon." Steve mutters.

I've got a lock on Barton's location, but everything goes downhill from there. Quite literally. Just after I pull the quinjet off the ground something blows and the jet goes into a nosedive, right down the mountain I was on top of. As if gravity wasn't enough, one of the engines is functional enough to add to the velocity, and before I can even get a warning call out to the team the jet slams into the ground. It does a few flips and I get thrown about before it slams into a boulder and I'm thrown through the windshield into the snow.

 _That wasn't too bad_ , I think, looking back at the wrecked quinjet. _Tony is going to murder me anyway though_.

But when I look closer, I see that the windshield is still intact, so I couldn't have been thrown through it. There's no broken glass anywhere, and the quinjet rotor is inches above my head. There's no way I should have survived that.

"Are you alright?" Someone asks, inches from my ear. I twist around to look at whoever is speaking to me, and my jaw drops.

"It is you." He smiles. "I wasn't sure at first. I thought I must be imagining things." He offers me a hand and I stand up.

"Pietro, you- you're here. And… _different_ ," I say, noticing his hair has turned silver-white and his once brown eyes are now light blue.

"Not bad, no?" he smirks.

"What happened to you?"

"I've been enlightened."

"You're the enhanced." I say, more for my own benefit than his.

"Uh… yes?"

"Where's Wanda?"

"Here. It was her who did the plane. If we had known it was you, we would not have done so."

"She crashed the plane?" Speaking of, we're all pretty much screwed now. Barton needs evac and we have no way to get out. "Crap, the plane," I mutter, crawling over the wreckage and trying to look at the damaged rotor.

"Nat, Tony, the plane's down. We might be stuck here."

"You're working with them?" Pietro asks in disgust, climbing up next to me and kicking at the jet. "The Avengers, and…" He wrinkles his nose in disgust, " _Stark_."

"I came back to find _you_. You and your sister. This happened to be the next flight here. and now one of the team is badly injured, and we can't get him the attention he needs without this plane. And I'm sure I don't have the skill necessary to fix him with just this little thing." I hold up my pack.

"Well, go help them then. Wanda and I do not need your help, or anyone's help anymore. Especially from an Avenger."

"I'm not an Avenger, and I wanted to be a friend. Friends help each other, don't they? Why did you even save me from the jet just now?"

"I thought you were different.." he says, before disappearing in a cloud of blue.

"Syd? Sydney? come in." Steve demands.

"Sorry, what?"

"That's what I want to know. Did you say you crashed the jet?"

"One of the rotors blew. I'm at the bottom of the mountain right now, yes. I'll need Tony if there's any chance of fixing this."

"Tony's not responding."

"What? Where is he?"

"Last I know, retrieving the scepter. And there's another enhanced. A female." _Wanda._

"Okay, well, I'll see what I can do with this." The best I can tell, the rotor is fused together. I'm not sure how that's possible, but I suppose it may have overheated to the point of welding it together. But why didn't any alarms go off?

"Jarvis, can you tell me anything about what happened?"

" _I'm afraid not, Ma'am. My protocols were overridden and I was unable to inform you of the problem. Even now, I cannot access the backups and obtain a record of the crash._ "

"Thanks for trying, J. How long would it take to get another jet here?"

" _There is a quinjet about twenty minutes out. As soon as I detected the problem with this one, I sent another out to replace it._ "

"You're the best, Jarvis."

" _I try my hardest, thank you._ "

The rest of the op goes pretty smoothly. Thor brings banner in a few minutes before the jet arrives. Romanoff and Banner come limping into port soon after. Steve is just behind them and Tony is last, seeming very distant.

"Let's get him hooked up to some fluids." Banner says, fumbling around with the small amount of medical supplies onboard.

"Let me, I can handle it." I say, wrestling away the gear from him. The Hulk burns a lot of energy, and compared to the rest of the team I haven't done anything worthwhile today.

"Urrrgh.." Clint moans and shifts on the table.

"Chill out, bird boy." I say. "We're on our way back now." I feel around for a vein and stick him to the bag of fluids hanging right above him. I take a peek at his wound. Natasha stuck some gauze to it, and I don't want to pull it away and start it bleeding again, but it looks big, but not deep, like she said. Not deep enough to damage any organs, unless it's by a burn.

"How is he?" Nat asks. Her and Clint are close, so I imagine she's pretty shaken up right now.

"Stable. But I can't do much else for him. His best option is getting back to Doctor Cho."

"Are we there yet?" Clint grumbles.

"Just about, champ." I say, messing up his hair. "I'm going to go talk to Tony. Try to stay still if you can help it."

"Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere."

I walk up to Tony, who is flying the jet, and lay a hand on his shoulder to let him know I'm there. He starts, but puts on his game face and looks at me.

"You alright?" I ask.

"Hm? Yeah, fine." He says, turning back to the controls and pretending to be busy.

"Really, Tony. What happened? You're never this quiet. Talk to me." I try to work some of the tension out of his shoulders.

"I don't know what happened. I can't explain it. I saw something down there in that lab. It was like my worst nightmare, but real. And then it was gone, but not really gone because I can't forget it. How can you forget something like that?"

I stop kneading his shoulders and listen. I've never seen him like this before. "It wasn't real." I say.

"Not yet." He replies, turning in his chair to look at me. "That's what makes it so terrible, because now I know what's coming."

"What's coming?" I ask, dread creeping up my spine.

"The end. Of the Avengers. And then everything else. And there's nothing I can do to stop it. Even if I try, I might just make it happen. A self-fulfilling prophecy. What do I do?" He looks me straight in the ey, begging me for an answer.

"You try your hardest, and hope for the best. And don't think for one minute any of us are going down quietly. Least of all me."

"Thanks, kid." he says, squeezing my shoulder and walking away.

In a few minutes we set down at the tower, and I get Barton ready for transport. He's starting to look pale and lethargic, which is not a good sign. As soon as the rear hatch opens, I start rolling. Doctor Cho and two assistants are waiting for us in the bay, and together with Nat they rush him down to the lab.

Before I can get on the elevator someone calls my name.

"Got a minute?" Hill asks me. I nod. "These are the files from Strucker's lab. You've been to Sokovia before, right?"

"Last year, when the riots broke out. Just for a few days."

"Funny thing about that, it looks like the riots were sparked by HYDRA's presence there. After everyone got all fired up, Strucker went in and recruited people for him to experiment on, promising them great power and the ability to make big changes."

"That makes sense. I didn't know it at the time, but HYDRA had just moved in when I got there. Some of the people I met mentioned people in black coming in and setting up shop in the old fortress."

"Ever see these two?" Maria hands me a tablet with a clip of the twins. "The only two to survive the experiments. The two enhanced you met earlier. If you've got anything on them, now's a good time to share it."

I watch the clip, a video feed of some of the riots, and at the front of the line Wanda and Pietro, as I remember them, before Strucker did whatever he did to them. There are records of the bombings before, and their time in the orphanage, and incidents in between. These records know them better than I do.

I shake my head. "Nothing I can tell you. You've got a pretty comprehensive view here."

"You don't know them then?"

"Nope." Only a half lie. I can't truly say I know them. Today proved that. Pietro said it himself.

"Well, if you think of anything, let us know. Feel free to look through the files. You've got a better knowledge of Sokovia than anyone else here."

"I was there for two days." I say. "I don't know as much as you guys think."

"Well, it's worth a shot. Anything helps."

I take the tablet with me down to Banner's lab, where Doctor Cho has Clint set up under her tech, a smaller version of the Cradle. Tony told me a little about it, but I'm eager to learn more. The possibilities are huge, especially if she can get it even smaller than what she has now. If there was a portable version of this, a lot of good could be done by relief work worldwide. The biggest challenge to humanitarian work is offering medical assistance in areas without good equipment.

This version of the Cradle is set up on a track that sits above Barton's torso. Two pieces run on the track, printing out new skin over the wound.

Natasha is studying Barton just as closely as I am, but I suspect her interest lay more with the welfare of her friend rather than the science behind it. "Are you sure he's gonna be okay?" She asks. "Pretending to need this guy really brings the team together."

"There's no chance of deterioration," Cho says as she adjusts something on her machine. "The nanomolecular functionality is instantaneous. His cells don't know they're bonding with simulacrum."

"She is creating tissue," Banner says, eyes lit up like a kid in a candy store.

"If you brought him to my lab, the regeneration cradle could do this in twenty minutes." Cho says. It's amazing. But it makes me wonder about the possibility of shrinking the device. If the full version takes twenty minutes, how long would a small one take? Something the size of a pencil?

"Oh, he's flatlining. I'm calling it." Tony teases as he comes in with a tray of his special smoothie mix. Surprisingly, there's no alcohol in it. For him, that's significant.

"No, no, no, I'm going to live forever!" Clint protests, taking one of the smoothies from Tony and sipping on it. "I'm going to be made of plastic."

"You'll be made of you, Mr. Barton." Helen corrects. "Your own girlfriend won't be able to tell the difference."

"I don't have a girlfriend." Barton says.

"Well, that I can't fix." Helen says with a raised eyebrow. "This is the next thing, Tony." She says, tapping away at her tablet. "Your clunky metal suits are going to be left in the dust."

"Well, that is exactly the plan." Tony says. I furrow my eyebrows. Interesting plan… "And Helen, I expect to see you at the party on Saturday."

"Unlike you, I don't have a lot of time for parties." She says, acting dismissive, but then the stops and asks a bit cautiously, "Will Thor be there?"

"Yep, and so will you. I gotta borrow Bruce for a minute, okay?"

"No, well, wait, what are you-" Banner protests as Tony takes him by the shoulders and steers him out of the lab.

"I'll bring him back after." And then they're gone.

I talk with Helen for a while about the science behind her inventions, but after that I settle in with my tablet and do some research into Strucker's files.

First I read everything he has on the twins. Early life, their parents, their apartment, the orphanage, where they went after. Civil records. I knew most of it already. Then I get into the experiment itself. There's video feed, but I don't dwell there too long. It's horrible to watch, but I can't turn away. The enhancement process was agonizing for them, being changed at their very core and waiting while their very being got rebuilt from the inside out. I can't imagine it. And of course Strucker didn't value any of his subjects. They were all expendable, replaceable. All he cares about was his work.

He approached them just days after I escaped. And they went willingly. Again, I replay my time there and think of some other way it could have ended. If they could have escaped too. Or if I had stayed, I could have talked them out of it. If I had been able to identify Strucker a year ago, a lot of damage could have been stopped before it happened, if I could have brought Tony and the team in then. But they would have felt so betrayed, even more than they do now. Because they still don't know who I am. I'm the girl who helped them, but then joined the Avengers, their greatest enemy. Add the Stark name to that, and then what? And if Strucker had identified me first, I'd be hunted down without a chance.

Somebody else comes into my mind, someone I haven't thought of in a long time. Sean. He was very interested in HYDRA and what they were doing, even before we knew who they were. What ever happened to him? I do a bit more digging into the files, looking for anything about him. It takes hours, but I finally find it. Security footage from the fortress. Guards standing about, and then Sean approaches. He calls out to them, hands in the air, like he's surrendering to them. Three more come up behind him and knock him out, dragging him through the entrance and inside the stronghold.

Deeper in, they went through all his things, his laptop, his belongings. My stomach churns. He was the one that carried all our footage and records. He surely had information about me in there. Granted, I never told him my family name. The world knows me as Sydney Collins, but surely HYDRA would have had the resources to dig further. S.H.I.E.L.D. knew who I was. HYDRA must know.

There's a good reason my parents gave me my mother's last name. After several attempts on Tony's life as a child to get to Howard, our father, they weren't taking any chances with me.

And what better way to get to Iron Man than to go through me?


	3. Chapter 3

"It's a trick!" Clint says, spinning a drumstick in his fingers as he sits on the couch. The party was done and over, in record time it seemed. Being an introvert, unlike Tony, parties always seemed more like a chore than down time for me. But I learned to live with it. No hiding alone in my room allowed for this particular introvert.

"No, no, it's much more than that." Thor says. It's just the team left now, plus Hill and Doctor Cho. Small groups like this are much easier for me to deal with.

"Ah, 'whosoever be he worthy shall haveth the power!' Whatever man, it's a trick." First I wonder how Clint can be so dismissive of this, working for SHIELD as long as he had. There are much weirder things in the world than a hammer that doesn't like to be touched. But then I remember Natasha telling me that Clint used to work with the circus in his pre-shield days, and his denial makes a little more sense. Working in the entertainment biz like he did, he's surely seen lots of supposed 'magic' tricks before.

"Well, please, be my guest." Thor says, gesturing to the coffee table where Mjolnir sits.

"Really?" Clint asks, standing up and marching over to the coffee table.

"Clint, you've had a tough week. We won't hold it against you if you can't get it up." Tony quips, and the group laughs.

"You know I've seen this before, right?" Clint asks Thor as he grabs the handle and yanks upwards. He may as well be trying to move a brick wall. He grunts a little, and I'm worried he will reopen his wound, but he doesn't push himself too far. "And I still don't know how you do it!" He laughs mirthlessly.

"Smell the silent judgement?" Tony smirks.

"Please, Stark, by all means." Clint says. The group is getting excited now. Who needs truth or dare when you have 'worthy or not worthy'?

"Never one to shrink from an honest challenge." Tony says as he saunters around the table, unbuttoning his jacket and vest. "It's physics."

"Physics." Someone scoffs.

"So if I lift it, I then rule Asgard?" Tony asks Thor.

"Yes, of course." Thor grins.

"I will be re-introducing Prima Nocta." Tony says. I snort. Dork. He pulls for a moment, stops, and gets that thinking look I know very well. "Be right back." He runs off to the lab.

When he comes back he's wearing the arm of his suit.

"Oh, now this is getting interesting." I say, leaning back on the sofa and putting my bare feet on the table. He pulls with his suit, and his arm twists around from the strain, and smoke starts coming from the little repulsors he uses to guide the suit, but nothing else happens.

"Rhodes, give me a hand?" Tony says, still pulling on the handle. Rhodey gets the arm off of his suit and pulls with Tony.

"Are you even pulling?" Rhodey asks.

"Are you on my team?" Tony fires back.

"Just represent, pull!"

"Alright, let's go." A few minutes later they give up.

"Who can't get it up now?" Clint sasses.

"Ooooh, shots fired." I say. "Bruce, your turn."

"I already know the big guy can't budge this thing." He says, stepping forward. "Unless you count knocking Thor himself over."

"Nope, doesn't count." Tony says, sitting back down and mirroring my stance, feet on the table and arms on the back of the couch.

"Alright, here goes." Bruce walks forward in that cautious, deliberate way unique to him and grabs the handle. He pulls, furrows his brows a bit then starts yelling and steps back, pretending to Hulk out. He grins, expecting some laughs but I swear I can hear crickets chirp in the background. "Huh?"

Steve gets up next, grinning a little as he steps up to the plate. He takes a deep breath, grabs the handle and pulls up. I swear I can see it move a little bit, but it's a fraction of a second and then he's shaking his head and backing away from the hammer.

Thor chuckles a little. "Nothing, ha."

"And? Widow?" Bruce gestures to the ginger gunslinger.

"Oh, no, that's not a question I need answered."

"Alright, Squid," Tony says, and I cringe at his nickname for me. "Time to defend the family name."

"Hah," I say, and I get up from the couch. "Legally, my name isn't Stark."

"Biologically, we're related, so shut up and work that thing."

All eyes on me, I grin because I already know I won't be able to move it. At this point, I'd settle for a loophole. Sure enough, the thing doesn't budge a millimeter.

"Thor, a hand?" I ask, moving out of the way and gesturing to Mjolnir.

"We already know he's worthy." Clint quips. Thor picks up his hammer and twirls it a little, looking back at me.

I position him so he's standing in front of me, then crouch down a little and grab him around the waist. "Lean over." I command, and he does. The man weighs a ton, I'll say that much.

Grunting a bit, I struggle to stand upright, but once I do I'm steady. I hold his arm and leg in front and carry him this way across the room, then set him down again.

"There, I moved it. Technically."

"Nah, doesn't count, man!" Rhodey says. "You can't cheat that way."

"Points for effort, kid." Tony says. "All deference to the man who wouldn't be king, but it's rigged. The handle's imprinted, right? Like a security code? 'Whosoever is carrying Thor's fingerprints,' is, I think, the literal translation?"

"Yes, well, that's a very interesting theory." Thor says, swinging Mjolnir around a bit. "But I have a simpler one. You're all not worthy."

The group erupts in protest, but conversation dies short as a piercing whine fills the room. I cover my ears and feel a shiver of pain run down my spine, like hearing nails on a chalkboard.

"Worrrtthhyyyy…" a distorted voice creaks, and all attention is drawn to the source. One of the Iron Legion suits, but mangled into some Frankenstein's monster variation of the original, dripping oil all over the floors and fumbling over trailing wires. "No, how could you be worthy? You're all killers."

"Stark." Steve scolds.

"Jarvis?" Tony asks softly, looking at his handheld device.

"I'm sorry," The voice continues. "I was asleep, or I was a-dream."

"Reboot Legionnaire OS, got a buggy suit." Tony says, pounding the keys on his screen.

"There was this terrible noise, and I was tangled in… strings." The suit says, wobbling a bit and listing to the side like a drunk man. "I had to kill the other guy. He was a good guy."

"You killed someone?" Steve asks, stepping forward a bit and crossing his arms. Normally a stance like that conveys dominance, and is an effective intimidation tactic when on missions. But can a buggy suit be intimidated?

"Wouldn't have been my first call. But, down in the real world, we're faced with ugly choices."

"Who sent you?" Thor asks.

I hear Tony's voice next, but it is not Tony speaking. "I see a suit of armor around the world."

"Ultron." Banner says, looking at Tony. I narrow my eyes. They've been working on the Ultron program without me? I helped come up with the idea.

"In the flesh." The suit, Ultron, says. "Or, no, not yet. Not this… chrysalis. But I'm ready. I'm on a mission." Thor tightens his grip on Mjolnir, Hill cocks her handgun and slowly stands.

"What mission?" Natasha demands.

Ultron plays another recording, again of Tony. "Peace in our time." Two more suits burst through the wall from the shop behind. Steve kicks over a table in front of him, first instinct always defense and not offense. He gets knocked backwards by the impact of the suits and tables through a window behind and falls down to the next floor. Hill hits the deck and starts firing into the air. Thor knocks two aside effortlessly. Tony and Thor scramble for their suits. I sit crouched behind the sofa, trying to come up with a plan. I'm not a supersoldier, or a demigod, and I don't even have a suit. But neither does Doctor Cho. I scramble across the floor towards her and pull her away towards the edge of the room. Isn't that always my job? Not to attack, but to defend, and heal.

After I make sure she's out of the line of fire, I scramble for the door and run for the lab. There are more suits in here, and as soon as I burst through the door one grabs the scepter and takes off into the sky. Another charges up to me and raises its arm, hand lighting up. Just before the charge reaches critical, I jump to the side and the shot goes past me.

I run back down the hallway into the main room, where the fight is dying down. Mjolnir flies past me and takes out the bot stalking me. Ultron sits nearby, smashed to pieces and dying down.

"I had strings, but now I'm free. There are no strings on me, no strings on me, no strings on meee…." The power dies and the mask goes dark.

"Stark?" Steve demands.

"I don't know! Let me just-" Tony gently pushes me aside and goes down to the lab.

"It's a mess down here, Tony. And they took the scepter." I say, trailing after him.

"Will someone explain what is going on?" Hill demands.

Thor drags the ruined Ultron in with him and lifts it up onto the workbench. "I'm going after the others. I'll be back." He takes off.

"All our work is gone." Banner cries, frantically punching keys and looking through the computer. Tony just stares at the broken robot like he's seen a ghost. "Ultron cleares out, used the internet as an escape hatch-"

"Ultron." Steve scoffs.

"He's been in everything, files, surveillance. Probably knows more about us than we know about each other." Natasha continues.

"He's in the files, he's in the internet. What if he decides to access something a little more exciting?" Rhodey says, clutching his shoulder which got twisted during a fall. He's lucky it didn't get dislocated or broken.

"Nuclear codes." Hill finishes.

"Nuclear codes." Rhodey confirms. "Look, we need to make some calls, assuming we still can."

"Nukes?" He said he wanted _us_ dead." Natasha says.

"He didn't say dead, he said extinct." Steve reiterates.

"He also said he killed somebody." Clint says.

"There wasn't anyone else in the building." Hill says, pulling glass shards out of her feet.

"Yes, there was." Tony says, stepping towards the room's holographic zone.

"No, not-" I say.

"Jarvis." Tony finishes, swiping his command card and pulling up an image of the AI. Or what's left of him. What once was clear, crisp lines of code orbiting in a very neat fashion is now as scattered and destroyed as the rest of the tower. I gasp and cover my mouth with my hand. This wounds me as deeply as losing one of the team. Jarvis was one of the team, despite being a program. And he was all I had left of the real Jarvis, who I remember fondly from my younger days. Without him and Pepper I surely would have been taken away from Tony.

"This is insane." Banner says, holding his hands out and his mouth agape in shock.

"Jarvis was the first line of defense." Steve says. "He would have shut Ultron down. It makes sense."

"No, Ultron could have assimilated Jarvis. This isn't strategy, this is.. rage."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, it's going around." Clint says as Thor storms over to Tony and grabs him by the throat.

"Come on, use your words, buddy." Tony chokes out.

"I have more than enough words to describe you, Stark." Thor says.

"Thor!" Steve scolds, and the Asgardian puts my brother down. "The Legionnaire?"

"The trail went cold about a hundred miles out, but it's headed north, and it has the scepter. Now we have to retrieve it, again."

"Genie's out of that bottle. Clear and present is Ultron."

"I don't understand." Helen says. "You built this program. Why is it trying to kill us?"

"I'm wondering that too, Tony." I say. "Ultron was supposed to be the answer to the Legionnaire, the next step to ending the fight, not making a bigger fight. This was _our_ project, and-."

"You were in on this?" Steve demands. "What is it with you Starks and-"

Tony starts laughing. Everyone stops arguing and looks at him. This laugh is different from his normal laugh. It's the kind of laugh where everything is so hopeless and overwhelming the only option left is to either laugh or cry.

"Uh-uh." Banner says, shaking his head a bit at Tony.

"You think this is funny?" Thor asks, looking like he's ready to lunge at Tony again and smash him over the head this time.

"No?" Tony answers. "It's probably not, right?" I sigh and put my forehead in my hands. Unbelievable. "Is this so terrible? Is this very terrible? Is it so...is it so...it is, it's so terrible."

"This could have been avoided had you not played with something you don't understand."

"Tony, come on, we just got this thing, and who knows what Strucker did to it, or what Loki did, or where Loki got it from, and you go and do this. Honestly, this could have been worse. Best case scenario now, we find Ultron before he causes any more damage."

"No, no I'm sorry, it is funny." Tony says. "It's a hoot why you don't get why we need this."

"Oh, totally, cause I always needed another person trying to kill me." I sass.

"Tony, maybe this isn't the time-" Banner starts.

"Really? That's it? You just roll over, show your belly, every time somebody snarls?"

"Only when I've created a murder-bot."

"We didn't. We weren't even close. Were we close to an interface?" Banner shrugs. That's kind of what they were trying to do, after all. Can't get mad when it works.

"Well, you did something right. And you did it right here." Steve says. "The Avengers were supposed to be different than SHIELD."

"Anybody remember when I carried a nuke through a wormhole?" I roll my eyes.

"Nope, it's never come up." Rhodey says.

"Saved New York?"

"Never heard that." Rhodey.

"Recall that? A hostile alien army came charging through a hole in space. We're standing 300 feet below it. We're the Avengers. We can bust arms dealers all the live long day, but, that up there? That's...that's the end game. How were you guys planning on beating that?"

"Together." Steve says.

"We'll lose."

"Then we'll do that together too. Thor's right. Ultron's calling us out. And I'd like to find him before he's ready for us. The world's a big place. Let's start making it smaller."

"I'll go to the Pentagon and start working on those codes." Rhodey says, getting up and gathering his coat.

"I can get online and try to track down where Ultron went." Maria says, finishing with her bandage and tenderly standing on it. "I'll put out a news alert on anything resembling Ultron's plays so far."

"Thor, let's take a look at some maps and try to figure out where Ultron might be headed." Steve says, heading for the door.

"Very well." Thor says and follows.

"I'll get in touch with some old contacts and tell them to keep an eye out." Clint says.

"Agreed." Natasha says, following him.

"I'll start looking into the computers and try to figure out what happened." Banner says, plopping into a chair and typing away.

"Tony, a word?" I ask, dragging him away and down into the machine shop, which is a mess after Ultron made his own little army. "How could you?"

"How could I what? This is exactly what we talked about,"

"No, no,"

"Exactly what we planned on doing,"

"No it isn't."

"So I did it, and suddenly now that I did it's a bad idea?"

"It's not that you did it, it's how you did it. I thought we were together in this. We used to be. I thought. All you do is shut me out now."

"I'm not shutting you out. Not at all."

"Yes you are."

"Well, what about you? Just up and taking off without a word, globetrotting with some pseudo-anarchist group-"

"It was never about-"

"Half the time I didn't even know what country you were in, and then suddenly you show back up and expect everything to be the same."

"You obviously didn't want me here. Probably still don't."

"Oh, come on, when have I ever given you that impression?"

"Oh, I don't know, maybe all the time, but the one that stands out most in my mind is when you went missing for three months and everyone thought you were dead, and I came home, and Pepper was a mess, and Rhodey wouldn't talk to anyone, and then suddenly you were back and I was never happier, but you just walked right by me like I wasn't even there. You got off that plane, and didn't even say a word to me. You were back, but you never really came back from that. And since then things just keep changing even more."

"I was gone for three months! What did you expect from me? You weren't there. You didn't see the things I saw, go through all those things. If you saw it, you'd know. When I left, I was Tony Stark. I came back as Iron Man. Can't you just be proud of me for that?"

"I am proud of you," I say, taking his hands and squeezing them. "You've done good things the past few years. You've changed, and cleaned up your life, and you're using it to help others. That's all I ever wanted to do. That's why I left, because I thought I could do more good for the world out there than I could stuffed in a lab working up new inventions designed to blow up. But now, things are different, and the Avengers are supposed to help people, which is all I ever wanted. We'd make a good team, if you just let me."

"You want to wear a suit?" He asks incredulously.

"No, that's your thing. But I can help from the sidelines. Designing, repairing, recruiting. I have connections all over the world now. I've seen all those things up close and personal too, and now that I know what and where they are I can direct attention there so it can get fixed."

"Yeah, you always did like fixing things," he says, running his hands over my palms and looking at them. "You've just gone from fixing old cars and radios to fixing the world."

"Exactly. And so have you. So imagine what we could do if we worked together instead of apart."

He nods thoughtfully. "Unstoppable."

"Us against the world."

"Let's go find Ultron."


	4. Chapter 4

"Would you just stop that already?" Banner grouches from his seat on the Quinjet.

"I'm sorry," I protest, sitting down across from him and fidgeting.

"You've been pacing across the floor for half an hour now. You're going to wear a hole in the floor."

"Anything could be happening in there. They could be outnumbered and need backup, or injured and we would never know because the comms are down. They should have brought us in."

"Do you really want to be in the middle of a firefight if that's what's going down?"

"No, but I'd rather be there with them then here, useless."

"Don't think of it as being useless, think of yourself as… a reserve member." I cast him a raised eyebrow. "Well, that's how I think of it anyway."

I open my mouth to argue that he actually has some firepower to offer, and I'm more comparable to pit crew than a backup quarterback but instead I just say, "Thanks."

Some garble comes through the comms, but it's impossible to decipher. "Guys? Is this a code green?" Banner asks. He opens the rear hatch and looks out towards the ship.

I can hear gunfire coming from the ship, but that by itself doesn't mean much, other than the fact that the plan of coming here just to talk just went down the drain.

Workers from the ship start flooding out into the riverbed, which I take as a good sign. They're retreating instead of the Avengers.

Out of the corner of my eye I see a slight blur, and I try to focus on it but I can't catch it in time. From this distance I can't make anything out.

"Hey, guys, come in. Do you need backup? What's going on in there?" Banner says over the radio again. "I can't reach them."

Before I can even register that the blur was back it's there and gone, and Pietro is holding my hands behind me and has his arm across my neck, restraining me. Wanda appeared behind Banner, who hasn't even seen her yet.

"Woah, okay, okay, just calm down-" He says, looking at Pietro.

"Bruce-" I start to warn him, but Pietro tightens his grip and jars me, cutting me off. It's too late. Wanda is already there, using her enhancements on Banner, red energy coursing around him and through him, until he stumbles forward outside of the jet and looks up at the sky.

"Bruce! Fight it!" I yell, and Pietro flings me around onto the floor of the jet. I look behind him, and now Bruce is stumbling along, leaning over the ground.

Then he starts to turn green. "No!" I yell, trying to get up. Maybe I could talk him down if-

"Save your breath." Pietro snarls, planting his foot on my shoulder and pushing me back down to the ground. "There's nothing you can do to stop it now." I know he's right. Banner is already gone, replaced by the Hulk, the worst outbreak I have ever seen. A faint red glow still lingers around him, keeping him in this mental state. Sometimes there's a chance of controlling or directing the Hulk, but there's no chance of that now. He looks at the sky again and roars a challenge to it, then bounds off and disappears into the jungle.

"You have no idea what you've just done." I say. "Why would you team up with Ultron? He's insane." The question had been burning at me for days.

"Not as insane as the rest of you." Wanda snaps back, leaning down over me and twirling some red energy around her fingers.

"Did you think we wouldn't find out?" Pietro snaps, pressing down harder into my shoulder. "Trying to earn our trust, get close to us, pretend you cared. If I had known who you are, you would have never made it out of Sokovia. After everything you Starks have done-" My heart sinks and a twinge of fear and shame go through me. My worst nightmare is now coming true.

"Pietro, I-"

"Don't even. There's nothing you can say that will make you anything less than the disgusting, arrogant, heartless murderer that you are. And you can tell the same to your brother." He lets the pressure off my shoulder and storms out of the quinjet. "Your turn," He says to Wanda. She looks back at me, and I see a faint red glow start in her eyes as her hands start glowing too.

"Wanda, just let me-" I try to talk her out of it. She's the more levelheaded of the two. But the energy bursts forward and surrounds me, creeping into my mind and going through everything. I see everything flash in my mind, my entire life compressed into a few seconds of images, and every emotion I have ever felt churning through my mind, switching back and forth so fast it makes me feel ill.

She backs away from me and I almost think I see a flash of pity in her eye, but then Pietro comes back and they disappear.

I try to sit up and crawl back to the comms and alert the team, but as soon as I roll over the red energy takes over completely and my vision goes black.

I wake up in a snowbank. The snow is still falling as I get to my feet and brush the snow off my body. Just down the road is a car, smashed into a tree and spitting smoke. It's a miracle the car didn't go over the side of the bridge into the river below. A lone figure stands in front of the car, shoulders tense and hands clenched at his sides.

"They're looking for you." He says, turning around. I come closer and stand in front of him.

"Who is? What happened?"

"Everyone. You killed them." Chills run down my spine and the snow feels that much colder all of a sudden. I rush past him to the car and look inside, but I wish I hadn't.

This is my parents' car accident. The night that they died. My father sits slumped over the wheel, blood pouring out of his head, and my mother is stretched between the seats, reaching towards the backseat with her neck at an unnatural angle and her back and legs crushed by the car impact. She's reaching for the car seat in the back, but it's empty.

I look back at Tony and he's still looking at me, silently accusing me of this tragedy. He holds the car carrier on his arm now, and rescue crews are working in the background.

Then, without warning, he pushes me over the side of the bridge into the freezing water below.

And then I open my eyes again. Not in the river, but in the shower at my house in Malibu. I turn off the water and get out, wrapping myself in my towel and walking up to the mirror on the wall. The mirror is fogged up, so I run my hands over the glass to clear it.

I stumble backwards, almost slipping on the wet tile floor. It is not my reflection that I see in the mirror, but Tony. He reaches through the glass and grabs my wrist, pulling me through the portal. Now we're at Stark Industries, on the main production floor. Machinery zealously creates and assembles the parts in a neat line, ending in a stack of guns and rockets filling crates all over the room.

"This is your legacy." Tony tells me.

"No, it's not." I say, shaking my head furiously.

"It's your birthright. Your inheritance."

"I don't want it."

"It's time to claim your throne." He turns me so I'm facing the other way, where the Board of Directors sits around a conference table, watching us. There are two empty chairs and Tony drags me over towards them, pulling me down into one of them. I wrap the towel tighter around me, struggling to function in this atmosphere.

"Miss Stark…" the chairman starts.

"No." I interrupt.

He continues as if I had not spoken. "We have been examining your case for some time, and have finally come to a vote. We believe it is in the company's best interests for you to come on board. Congratulations. You are the new C.E.O. of Stark Industries." There's a small round of applause.

The man to my left puts a folder in front of me and sticks a pen in my hand. Every atom of my being tells my hand to throw the pen as hard as I can at one of their heads, but of it's own free will it signs the contract, promising my life away like a deal with the devil.

"Welcome to the company, Miss Stark." Obadiah Stane says, taking the folder from me and smiling at me ominously. I used to trust him so much, like one of the family. He practically was family to us. And then he sold Tony out and tried to take him from me. Who knows what he would have done to me had he succeeded?

"There's just one more thing." He turns my chair around and I cringe, knowing what they are about to ask of me. Pietro sits before me, tied to a chair and gagged, his only bargaining tool the look of pleading in his eyes.

Obadiah puts a gun in my hand and steps aside, waiting for the final act of initiation. I raise the gun and aim it, dimly noting that the make and model is a Stark Industries exclusive. Pietro lowers his head and looks at the floor, accepting his fate and waiting for the end. Anger boils up in me and I swing around to point the gun at Obadiah, firing before anyone can make a move to stop me.

Even I couldn't react fast enough to stop. I'm not sure it would have made a difference anyway. Because now, the person I shot sits dead at my feet.

And it's Pietro.

I sit straight up on the floor of the Quinjet and let out an ear-piercing howl. I start becoming calmer as I become more aware of my surroundings. I'm in Africa, with the team. On the Quinjet. Not about to sign a death note and bring truth to every one of the twins' accusations.

"What in the world is going on?" Clint asks as he leads Natasha into the Quinjet and sets her down on the seat. She looks bad, not at all the cool, calm, and collected woman I'm familiar with.

"You too, huh?" Clint says more softly, crouching down and running his hand across my face. "Just stay here, I'm going to get the others and then we can leave. You just gotta sit tight, okay?" He starts to stand up again.

"Wait!" I cry, grabbing his wrist and halting him. "Doctor Banner…"

"Your brother is already on it. You're going to be okay." I drop my grip and he leaves.

Everything is a blur after that. I drift in and out of lucidity, sometimes aware enough to see what's happening around me, sometimes back in my own mind, reliving that nightmare over and over and hearing the echoes long after they should have been gone.

" _This is your legacy._ " The gunshot echoes in my head again and I flinch.

"Sydney," I hear and I snap out of my stupor once again. Steve is looking at me, with the same dazed look in his eye as Natasha. I probably look the same.

"What?" I ask.

"We're here." He says, getting up and walking out of the Quinjet.

"Where?" I ask, scrambling up and padding after him. The team is walking along a path through a field, and there's a house just a little ways away. "Where are we?" I ask.

"A safe house." Tony says.

"Let's hope." Clint says from the front of the line. He unlocks the door and walks in. This doesn't look like a normal safe house. There's too much clutter. It almost looks like it's lived in.

No sooner do I think that then two children come thundering through the hallways and right into Clint's arms. A woman steps out from behind him, heavy with child and smiling brightly at Clint's attention to the two kids.

"Did you bring Auntie Nat?" The girl asks.

"Why don't you hug her and find out?" Natasha asks, scooping the little girl up and holding her tightly. Nat looks a bit better now, not so shellshocked as she did before. The little girl wriggles and squeals with joy, and promptly runs off with her brother the moment Natasha puts her down.

"Sorry for barging in on you." Steve says.

"Yeah, we would have called ahead, but we were busy having no idea that you existed." Tony quips.

"Fury helped me set this up when I joined. He kept it off SHIELD's files. I'd like to keep it that way. I figure it's a good place to lay low."

"Ah, I missed you." Natasha says, hugging the woman with an air of familiarity. "How's little Natasha doing?" She asks, touching the bump fondly. All this time, and I thought it would be Natasha herself who ended up with Clint.

Thor abruptly turns and thunders out the door and back into the yard. Steve rushes after him. "Thor." He calls. Thor turns back to look at the super soldier.

"I saw something in that dream. I need answers. I won't find them here." He raises his hammer to the sky and disappears in a flurry of dust and wind.

Steve turns around and starts, frozen in place with that absent look again. "Steve?" I ask, and he snaps out of it.

"Sorry." He says, walking into the house again.

"Don't be. From the looks of it, we're all in the same boat. A miserable, sinking boat most likely called the Titanic. What happened, anyway? On the boat."

"We got beat."

"This time. Can't win them all. It could have been a lot worse, I guess."

"Yeah, it could have."

The little boy approaches us, eyes on Cap and full of adoration. "Daddy says you like to draw. Will you draw something with me?"

"Sure, buddy." Steve says, putting on a smile. "What's your name?"

"Cooper." They walk off to a table and sit down with pencils and paper.

"Hi," Someone says, and I jump back in surprise. "Sorry," the woman says. "I just wanted to introduce myself. I'm Laura."

"Sydney," I say, shaking her hand. "Thank you for letting us stay here."

"Oh, my pleasure. The kids certainly are loving it." She nods her head towards the two Picasso wanna-be's in the next room.

I smile. "Yeah, they are."

Clint calls her from the kitchen. "Please, make yourself at home and don't hesitate to ask for anything."

She walks into the kitchen to Clint and they talk about whatever it is they are talking about, moving around and doing little things as they talk. It's so strange to see Clint in a family setting like this. I hadn't pegged him for that type at all.

"Why are you still standing next to the door?" The girl asks me, her arms crossed and eyebrows narrowed.

"Oh, uh, I don't know," I say as I step away a bit. "I don't know why." I say again.

"Come on, let me show you the house." She says, taking my hand and dragging me around. "I'm Lila." I smile. It amazes me how trusting she is despite having just met me a few minutes ago. With all the crazy stuff that's happening, it's nice to see that there is still some innocence left in the world.

~l~a~t~e~r~

"Ultron took you folks out of play to buy himself time." Fury says as he chops up some food in the kitchen. As it turns out, he's been hiding out here too. Now he's got everyone sitting around for a pep-talk-slash-lecture. "My contacts all say he's building something. The amount of vibranium he made off with, I don't think it's just one thing."

"What about Ultron himself?" Steve asks.

"Ah. He's easy to track, he's everywhere. Guy's multiplying faster than a Catholic rabbit. Still doesn't help us get an angle on any of his plans though."

"He still going after launch codes?" Tony asks, playing with some darts. Lila comes over to me and crawls into my lap with her notebook and crayons. The kid has hardly let me out of her sight all day.

"Yes, he is, but he's not making any headway."

"I cracked the Pentagon's firewall in high school on a dare." Tony brags.

"Plus, since Ultron is an AI, he's at a huge advantage. His program runs way faster than a human brain. He shouldn't be having that much trouble getting in." I add.

"Yeah, well, I contacted our friends at the Nexus about that." Fury says.

"Nexus?" Steve asks.

"It's the world internet hub in Oslo. Every byte of data flows through there, fastest access on earth." Banner explains.

"So what'd they say?" Clint asks, picking up a few more darts on the counter and lining them up in his hand.

"He's fixated on the missiles, but the codes are constantly being changed."

"By whom?" Tony asks, and the darts whistle through the air inches in front of his face, hitting the dead center of the board. Only one person could have made that shot. Tony glares at him at the same time I look over, and Clint gives a little smug shrug.

"Parties unknown." Fury simply states.

"We have an ally?" Natasha asks with some surprise.

"Ultron's got an enemy. That's not the same thing. Still, I'd pay folding money to know who it is."

"Still, 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend.' It's worth looking into, at least. We could use any help we can get." I say.

"I might need to visit Oslo. Find our 'unknown.'" Tony says, leaning against the doorframe thoughtfully.

"Well, this is good times, boss, but I was kind of hoping when I saw you, you'd have more than that." Natasha sasses.

"I do. I have you." Fury says. Nobody answers him, and the silence stretches on. If we're all that's standing between Ultron and his goal, the world is in a whole mess of trouble. "Back in the day, I had eyes everywhere, ears everywhere else. You kids had all the tech you could dream of. Here we all are, back on earth, with nothing but our wit, and our will to save the world. Ultron says the Avengers are the only thing between him and his mission. And whether or not he admits it, his mission is global destruction. All this, laid in a grave. So stand. Outwit the platinum son of a-"

"Steve doesn't like that kind of talk." Natasha interrupts, smirking at Cap.

"You know what, Romanoff?" He warns, eyebrow raised, but I see a hint of a grin on his face.

"So what does he want?" Fury continues as if nothing happened.

"To become better. Better than us." Steve says. "He keeps building bodies."

" _Person_ bodies." Tony jumps in. "The human form is inefficient, biologically speaking, we're outmoded. But he keeps coming back to it."

"When you two programmed him to protect the human race, you amazingly failed." Natasha says.

"They don't need to be protected. They need to evolve." Banner says softly, picking up one of Lila's drawings. "Ultron's going to evolve."

"How?"

"Has anyone been in contact with Helen Cho?"


	5. Chapter 5

"Incoming!" Nat yells, and the Quinjet does a loop in the air. There's a crash and Clint starts firing into the air, doing more twists and turns.

"How many?"

"Four, two on our tail and two more coming from the roof."

"Alright kids, hang tight." I watch on a small screen from the back. Clint keeps barreling down the throat of the two in front of us, weaving around shots and blasts as best he can. At the last minute he swings right, leaving the two pairs of robots to fire at each other. Two of them crash together and destroy each other.

"Good move." I say from the back.

"Thanks. Got any more suggestions?" Clint says as he dodges the remaining two robots.

"Full reverse thrust!"

"Hang on tight. 3...2...1…" Clint flips the engines and the inertia drags us forward in a whiplash movement. The two robots go flying past us, and as soon as they're clear Clint takes aim and takes them out. "Good call." He tells me.

"Ready for a drop, Cap?" Natasha says.

"On your mark." Steve gets up and stands ready at the rear hatch. I get up and stand next to him.

"You really should stay here." He warns me. "Now that we know for sure Ultron's already here." The only way I convinced them to let me come here in the first place is that while Helen was here, I spoke to her a lot and got to know her and her technology quite well.

"I'm coming with you." My tone of voice leaves no option for negotiation.

"Stay behind me and don't wander off." He says, jumping down onto the roof. I climb down after him and follow a few paces behind. "Two minutes, stay close." He tells Clint and Nat as they move the jet away from the roof.

There's no resistance as we move through the hallways towards the lab. In fact, there's no one here at all. Robot, or scientist. I find it odd. Surely there would be one or the other here. People that work here, going about their tasks, or Ultron's bots guarding them if he has everyone locked up somewhere.

The lab is completely destroyed. The entire medical staff has been killed, the equipment knocked about and damaged, and the Cradle is gone. Helen has been badly injured, but she's alive, thankfully. Steve sits her up and applies pressure to the wound on her side that's still seeping blood.

"He's uploading himself into the body." She says desperately, grabbing his arm and trying so hard to hold on.

"Where?" Steve asks. She shakes her head. He turns to the giant hole in the wall on the other side of the room, ready to engage in pursuit. She won't let go of him, holding him back.

"The real power is inside the Cradle. The gem, its power is uncontainable. You can't just blow it up. You have to get the Cradle to Stark."

"First, I have to find it." He says.

"Go," She urges, dropping her hand from his arm. He runs off through the hole in the lab and I take his place, grabbing gauze and putting pressure on her shoulder.

" _Did you guys copy that?_ " Cap says over the comms.

" _We did._ " Barton confirms.

" _I got a private jet taking off across town. No manifest. That could be him._ " Natasha says. I put my arm under Doctor Cho's good side and pull her to her feet, guiding her to a med table that sits nearby.

" _There. It's a truck from the lab. Right above you, Cap. On the loop by the bridge._ " Clint says. " _It's them. You've got three with the Cradle, one in the cab."_

"Where's the miniaturized version?" I ask, making sure she's steady enough to sit on the table by herself.

" _I can take out the driver._ " Clint suggests.

" _Negative. That truck crashes, the gem could level the city._ " Steve says. " _We need to draw out Ultron._ "

"It's in another lab down the hall. This lab is just for research."

"Can you make it down there?" I ask. She nods and slides off the edge of the table. I support her again and start walking down the hall. "Where?" She walks towards a door a few meters down.

"Here. Do you remember how to operate it?" She asks as I set her down on a med table and start bringing the gear to life. There's a disposable gown nearby and I tie it on and get some gloves.

"Yes, I remember." I take a cotton swab and soak it in some of the blood on her shirt, rub that inside the disposable primer on the machine. Set the material to analyze and start producing tissue using her own genetic blueprint as a guide. Since the tissue uses her DNA, it can't be rejected. While it's priming I give her a dose of painkillers to take the edge off.

" _Well, he's definitely unhappy._ " Steve says over the comms amidst the sound of screeching and crashing metal. " _I'm going to try and keep him that way._ "

Carefully I cut away the charred bits of her shirt, exposing the wound in its full glory. It's not as bad as it looks, I discover as I start wiping some of the blood away with a saline wipe.

" _You're not a match for him, Cap._ " Barton says.

" _Thanks, Barton._ " Steve replies.

I set the Mini-Cradle over the wound and turn it on. First it scans the wound, making what's kind of like a topographical map of the wound and the different tissue layers affected. A 3D model is displayed on the screen. Once it has identified the deepest areas affected, it starts printing out new tissue. Once I'm sure it's working, I tell Helen, "I'm going to see if anyone else in the lab survived. I'll be _right_ back."

"Go." she nods, and I run out the door back into the lab. I frantically check all the scientists for any sign of life. Breathing, pulse. Temperature. One after another, they're all dead. Around the sixth one I check, I get a small movement as I check his vitals. His breathing is slow, and his pulse erratic. I need to move quickly. I drag him down into the lab and wrestle him onto another table nearby. I rush through the prep procedure, willing the machine to work faster, or else I won't be able to save him. His wound is smaller but deeper, and most likely has ruptured his chest cavity. After an agonizing period of time, the machine beeps ready status and I set it to work.

Helen is pulling through, but she looks more lethargic now that the painkillers are taking effect. I check her vitals again to make sure they're stable and then rush back to the lab to make sure I didn't miss anyone. There's one more tech in the corner where I didn't see her at first, but it's too late. She's already gone. There's nothing else in here, so I go back to the med lab.

" _Clint, can you draw out the guards?_ " Natasha asks.

" _Let's find out._ " He replies.

"Did they get it?" Helen asks.

"Not yet." I say. "They're working on it."

" _They're heading back towards you._ " Barton says. " _So whatever you're going to do, do it now._ "

" _I'm going in. Cap, can you keep him occupied?_ "

" _What do you_ think _I've been doing?_ "

"Is there anything else you can tell me about what Ultron was building that might be of use in stopping him?" I ask.

"The gem was inside the scepter. It has the power to control other's minds when channeled, but by itself it can function as a sort of brain. And the body is vibranium fused." Aha, that's what he was planning with it. But he still has tons of it left. "That's the strongest metal on earth. The body will be nearly indestructible if he succeeds in uploading himself into it."

"They'll get it. There's too much at stake to fail."

" _Package is airborne. I have a clean shot._ "

" _Negative, I am still in the truck._ " Natasha says crossly.

" _What are you-_ "

" _Just be ready, I'm sending the package to you._ "

" _How do you want me to take it?_ "

" _Uh, you might wish you hadn't asked that._ "

" _I lost him! He's headed your way._ " Cap says.

" _Nat, we gotta go._ " Barton says tersely. There's some static and a muffled blast. " _Cap, do you see Nat?_ "

" _If you have the package, get it to Stark. Go!_ "

" _Do you have eyes on Nat?_ " Clint demands.

" _Go!_ "

"They have it." I tell Helen. "It's on it's way. It's over."

"Good." She nods. I check the progress of the regenerator. Her wound is about half as deep as it was, and it's stopped bleeding. In about twenty minutes she should be all done.

"Stark, come in." Steve says over comms. " _Stark. Anyone on comms._ "

"I copy."

" _Can you reach Barton or HQ?_ "

"Barton, come in." Nothing. "Barton. Base, do you copy? Steve, I'm not getting anything."

" _Copy that. We're on our way back to the lab. Any chance of having a jet in the air by the time we get there?_ "

"I'll see what I can do." I access the mainframe and start looking for a way back to New York.

"There's a jet in the lower levels." Doctor Cho tells me. "You can use it to get back to the tower."

"Can I remotely start it from here?" I ask, looking for it in the mainframe.

"Yes, but you'll need my access code. Eight-five-eight-six-five-two-four-one-three." I enter the numbers as she calls them and sign in.

"Got it." I run the jet's start up mode. "Thank you."

"You should get down there. You can leave as soon as he arrives. Tony will need you. You know the Cradle better than anyone else on the team."

"I can't leave you here like this."

"The regeneration cycle is almost done. Once it is, I can finish up and take care of him." She looks over at her assistant. "They need you."

"I'll check in with you later." I say, and run out into the hallway. "Cap, the jet's up and running. Meet me down in the sublevels of the building. I'll be waiting."

" _Copy that._ "

When I round the corner leading to the jet, I'm startled by who I see there. I quickly dodge into an alcove, but it's too late. He's seen me. In a blur he runs over and stands in front of me, blocking my path.

"Get away from me." I say, pushing him back and moving around him.

"No, Sydney, wait, let me explain."

"I'm not listening to anything you say. Not now. Not after what you two did in Africa."

"I'm sorry for that." Wanda says, stepping closer. "Now we know."

"Cap, we've got company. Look out." I say over the comms.

"Ultron?" He asks, coming through a side door into the flight bay. "Where is he?"

" _Them._ " I stress, pointing at them for greater effect. He looks at them, and back at me, making no move to confront them. "She's got you with her mind tricks," I say more to myself than anyone.

"Nobody's mind controlling anyone." Steve says. "They're working with us now."

"Why do I not believe you?" I ask rhetorically.

"Give us a chance to explain." Wanda says. "We can talk on the plane. But we need to move if we're going to stop Stark in time." She starts walking towards the jet.

"Stop Stark doing what?" I ask as she gets on. "I'm not getting on that plane until one of you explains what's going on." I say as I follow. Well, that was an empty threat. "We're not going anywhere until you start talking." Steve sits in the pilot seat and pulls us off the ground. "Is nobody listening to me right now?"

"Sydney," Pietro says and he touches my shoulder. I writhe away from his grip and glare at him.

"Don't touch me."

"Stark has the Cradle." Wanda says, looking at me meaningfully.

"Yeah? And? That was the plan." I back up a little bit towards the cockpit. I don't know if I can ever look at them the same after what happened in Africa.

"So what do you think he is going to do with it?" She follows me as I walk.

"Shut it down. Again, the plan."

"Will he?" Pietro asks. "Will he really?"

"He's not stupid." Now I'm cornered.

"No, he's not. He's smart enough to accomplish anything he wants to. That's what makes him so dangerous." I know I shouldn't listen to them, but they're making a surprising amount of sense. Tony hasn't exactly been upfront with me about a lot of things lately. And Doctor Cho's words come back to me. _The body will be nearly indestructible if he succeeds in uploading himself into it._

"I really hope you're wrong."

"So do I." Wanda says sadly.

~~l~~a~~t~~e~~r~~

"Where's Stark?" Steve demands of Maria the moment he steps foot outside the jet.

"He's in the lab with Doctor Banner, why?" Steve doesn't answer her, just sprints past her to the lab. The twins give each other a look and run after him, and I them.

"You have _got_ to upload that schematic within the next three minutes." Banner's voice carries across the hallways. What. The. Heck.

"I'm going to say this once." Steve snaps as he walks into the lab.

"How about none-ce?" Tony sasses from behind a computer. They've got the Cradle hooked up to coolants and power sources, wires everywhere giving readings on it. A quick look at one of the screens says they haven't even begun to decompose this thing, in fact, they've done just the opposite. Wanda was exactly right.

"Shut it down." Steve demands.

"Nope, not going to happen." Tony says, completely ignoring him and walking to another computer console.

"You don't know what you're doing." Steve says. I walk around him and walk right up to my brother, giving him a giant shove in the side. He staggers sideways and catches himself on a table, pulling himself up and looking at me in shock.

"And you do?" Banner replies to Steve. "She's not in your head?"

"What was that for?" Tony asks in a high voice.

"You know why! What do you think you're doing? This is ridiculous. You've already done this, in fact the Deja Vu is approaching quintessential, and not only that, but you are doing this without including me. Do you not remember what happened the last time you neglected to share this kind of information with me?"

"Banner, after _everything_ that's happened-" Steve starts to say.

"Maybe if you had been here and not gone to Korea chasing after your darling paragon Doctor you could have been here and been included."

There's a whoosh of blue around the room and the critical alerts go off. Pietro stands holding a severed power conduit and cavalierly casts it aside. "No, no, go on. You were saying?"

A gunshot goes off in the room and I duck and cover. The glass floor goes out from under Pietro and he crashes down to the floor below. Wanda yells his name and I crouch down next to the gap in time to see Hawkeye plant his foot on Pietro and hold him to the ground. "What? Didn't see that coming?" He says with a smirk.

The alarms start getting even louder, and Tony frantically goes for the keyboard. "I'm rerouting the upload."

"No, wait," I say, standing up and rushing for him. At the same time, Steve throws his shield which ricochets around the room and breaks countless pieces of equipment, sending glass and sparks everywhere. Oh, and that thing just might take somebody's head off. Tony grabs one of his gauntlets and gives Steve a repulsor to the stomach, sending him sprawling back a meter or so.

Banner grabs Wanda around the neck. "Go ahead, piss me off." he threatens. Barton charges up the stairs, gun held out in front of him as Tony starts piecing together his armor and Steve barrels down towards him. He throws a punch right as Tony fires another blast, sending both sprawling back and Tony crashing through a glass wall. The turbulence knocks me off my feet and stagger sideways, my right foot going over the side of the hole and the rest of me following suit soon after. I get a glimpse of Wanda blasting Bruce with her powers as I fall. I crash down on top of Pietro, who had just got back on his feet after Clint brought him crashing down.

"Sorry," I say, scrambling to my feet and helping him up again. He scoops me up in his arms and speeds up the stairs towards the gallimaufry of annoyed superheroes above.

I've never traveled at superspeed before, and it's strange. I expected it to look like some sort of mangled Star Trek Warp Drive, which it does, but what I forgot is that the Enterprise has inertial dampeners. I don't. The sudden motion gives me nausea, and once he sets me down again I feel like the room is spinning. I think I almost fall over because he puts his arm around my shoulder and holds me steady. "Sorry. That happens sometimes." He says.

Out of nowhere Thor appears, jumping on top of the Cradle and summoning a big charge of electricity that dances around the equipment and surrounding room. I breathe a sigh of relief. Now it's over.

"No, wait!" Banner yells as Thor directs this surge into the Cradle. After a moment the display screen lights up and powers up again. Whatever he's doing is actually feeding this thing instead of destroying it.

"Thor, stop!" I yell, not daring to get any closer to the electricity. My voice is lost in the deafening roar. But he does stop, never taking his eyes off the Cradle. The metal warps and contracts, finally giving way and sending shrapnel flying across the room. Thor is thrown backwards as Pietro pulls me down behind a nearby desk. Once the noise stops I peek over the desk, taking in the sight of this new… person. If he is a person.

He's perched on the edge of the Cradle, red and green and definitively eerie in the smoke emitted by the ruined machine. Slowly he stands and holds his hands up in front of him, looking at them in wonder. There's a faint yellow glow coming from his face and I can see the gem that Helen mentioned clearly now. The gem that was inside the scepter all this time.

He looks around at the group, then back at Thor. Without warning he leaps forward towards the Asgardian. Thor grabs his outstretched arms and flings him in a circle, through the lab's glass wall and out into the lounge beyond. It looks as if he's going to keep going right through the outer wall as well but just in time he flips around and stops-hovering in midair centimeters from the glass.

Thor rushes into the lounge, watching the new man as he floats in front of the glass. Cap jumps down too and starts rushing over, but Thor gestures for him to stay back.

The man's skin starts changing color, becoming more green than red over most of his body, like a suit. He turns and sinks down to the floor. Thor sets the hammer down on a table and walks closer.

"I'm sorry. That was… odd." The man says, with Jarvis's voice. "Thank you," He adds, looking at Thor.

"You put Jarvis into this thing?" I asked Tony.

"Uh, yeah." he whispers back to me. Movement catches my eye, drawing my gaze back at this new being. Something emerges from his shoulders, trailing down almost to reach the floor. A gold, shimmery cape. On his arms grow gauntlets too. How is he doing that? How can he create that from virtually nothing?

"Thor," Steve says. "You helped create this?"

"I've had a vision." Thor explains. "A whirlpool that sucks in all hope of life, and at it's center is that." He points at the gem.

"The gem?" Banner asks.

"It's the Mind Stone. It's one of the six Infinity Stones, the greatest power in the universe, unparalleled in its destructive capabilities."

"Then why would you bring-" Steve starts to ask.

"Because Stark is right." Thor interrupts.

"Oh, it's definitely the end times." Banner muses. I snort.

"The Avengers cannot defeat Ultron." Thor concludes.

"Not alone," The man says, wandering around the room as he speaks.

"Why does your vision sound like Jarvis?" Steve asks, circling around the vision and eyeing him over.

"We reconfigured Jarvis's matrix to create something new." Tony says, stepping around the other side.

"I think I've had my fill of new." Steve says.

"You think I'm a child of Ultron." The vision says, turning to look at Steve with a pensive look.

"You're not?" Steve asks incredulously.

"I'm not Ultron." The vision says, seeming to think about this problem and acquire a degree of introspection. "I am not Jarvis, I am…. I _am_."

"Well, that's comprehensive." I mutter under my breath.

"I looked in your head and saw annihilation." Wanda says, stepping closer cautiously.

"Look again," The vision offers.

Barton laughs dryly as he saunters over and says, "Her seal of approval means jack to me."

"Their powers, the horrors in our heads, Ultron himself, they all came from the Mind Stone. And they're nothing compared to what it can unleash. But with it on our side-"

"Is it?" Steve asks. "Are you?" He's still dubious. I can't say I blame him.

"I don't think it's that simple." The vision says.

"Well, it better get real simple, real soon." Barton says.

"I am on the side of life," the vision says, resuming his wandering about the floor. "Ultron isn't. He will end it all."

"What's he waiting for?" Tony asks.

"You."

"Where?" Banner asks.

"Sokovia. He's got Nat there too." Clint jumps in.

Banner narrows his eyes and cautiously steps closer to the android. "If we're wrong about you… if you're the monster that Ultron made you to be…"

"What will you do?" The vision is becoming more cryptic by the second. On the one hand, this statement could be a challenge, after all, there's not much we _could_ do if he decided to go berserk on us, but there's something else there, deeper. Almost a vulnerability, an echo of his reaction on coming out of the cradle. I get the feeling he's not a threat unless we make him one.

No one else has spoken in the period of time that this goes through my head. The vision blinks several times and tilts his head, like he's come to a conclusion. "I don't want to kill Ultron." he says, resuming his aimless wandering yet again. "He's unique and he's in pain. But that pain will roll over the earth, so he must be destroyed. Every form he's built, every trace of his presence on the net. We have to act now." He stops walking and turns to look at the team. "And not one of us can do it without the others."

"Maybe I am a monster," he muses, holding his hands up and looking at them. "I don't think I'd know if I were one. I'm not what you are, and not what you intended. So there may be no way to make you trust me. But we need to go now." And he holds Mjolnir up for Thor to take.

I was so engrossed in what he was saying I didn't notice that he had been moving in that direction, and didn't see him pick it up at all. But there's no denying it. There he stands, hammer in hand, for the entire team to see.

Thor, shellshocked, reaches out and takes it, eyes wide, and the vision leaves the room. "Right." Thor says. he pats Tony on the shoulder as he follows the android. "Well done."

Steve recovers first, snapping the rest of us out of our stupor. "Three minutes. Get what you need."

I smile my farewell at Pietro and run after Tony, who's already rushing down to the armory, I take it. The tower has turned into a beehive of activity as they prepare for the coming battle.

"You should stay here. This is going to be a pretty big mess. You could get hurt. Any of us could." He doesn't even turn to look at me, still focused on getting his gear ready. A twinge of unease goes through me as my nightmare from Africa surfaces again, but there isn't time to confront that particular demon right now. There are bigger fish to fry.

"I know. Both sides are going to draw blood today. That's why you need me to come." Now he does look at me, raising his eyebrow in his signature disdainful look, opening his mouth to speak, but I don't give him the chance. "You guys are seriously outnumbered. Who knows how many robots Ultron has now, plus since he's setting up shop in the city there's a chance of civilians getting in the crossfire too. I can help with the evacuation and be on call if anyone gets injured."

"It's still too risky. If this thing goes south, I'd rather have you as far away from there as possible."

"If things go south, it doesn't matter how far away I am. Ultron wins, everyone dies. I'm not asking permission, Tony."

"Then what are you asking?"

"I'd feel a lot better knowing I could defend myself out there if need be. You guys are going to have your hands full, so everyone needs to pull their own weight. What I really need is a gun."

This time he gives me a look of surprise. Studies me for a few seconds- each one that I count as one less second I could be using to get a med kit together- and then nods slowly.

"I don't have much in the way of guns anymore. All my resources get put into the suits. There's no way I can give you a suit today. You've never used them and it takes weeks of practice to learn how to use them adeptly. Plus I don't want Ultron confusing you for me and going after you. But I do have a prototype you could try out. It's basically a mini repulsor, not a full suit sleeve but a lightweight version. I haven't tested it at all, so caveat emptor."

"I'll take whatever you can give me."

He sighs and walks over to one particularly messy table in his very messy lab, picks up a small black loop and tweaks a few things on it, then plops it down on the table next to me. I pick it up and look at it. It's smaller than I thought, but it gets even smaller when I slide it over my wrist and it molds to the shape of my arm. It's some sort of black bracer, with no discernable weapons that I can see.

"This is more of a concealed carry type thing. The repulsor retracts when not in use." He says, answering my unspoken question. He puts a small earpiece on the table in front of me. "This goes with it. It's a dual communicator and headset targeting system. Same deal. The eyepiece is holographic and designed to be concealed. You better go get your stuff together, you only have two minutes left."

"Thanks, Tony." I say, giving him a hug and rushing off.

"Yeah, what are brothers for?" He mutters to himself as I leave, but not before I get out of earshot.

I run up to my room and grab my shoes and a jacket, and of course my ever-present backpack. It will be a race to get down to the lab and restock it before it's time to go.

"Sydney, I need to talk to you." Pietro says, zooming up beside me and keeping a steady pace with me.

"Make it quick, it's almost time to go and I still need to stock up on medical supplies." I say, holding up my backpack as an explanation. There's a rush of air and the pack is slipped out of my grasp, both pack and speedster gone in a flash of blue. Before I can even fully comprehend what just happen the blue blur is back and the pack is back in my hands, significantly heavier than before. I look inside and now it's crammed to the top with supplies. "Thanks," I say, pulling the straps over my shoulder and making way for the quinjet. "Are you and Wanda ready?"

"Yes, she's already on the plane. Are you?"

"I am now. So what did you need to talk about?"

"Oh, well, not now, but after we get back, Wanda and I both want to talk to you. Just to clear some things up. And apologize. I'll apologize now, and say I'm sorry for what happened and my part in it. I wasn't upset with you, really, I mean yes, your brother is an idiot but you're alright- look, I'm sorry, okay?"

"Apology accepted." I say, perhaps a little too eagerly. Half the things he said I couldn't make out, but I get the general idea. "And I'm sorry too,"

"For what?"

"For everything that happened to you and what part I had in it, and Tony too. I'll apologize for Tony. You probably won't ever truly like him, but take my word on it, he really has changed. I'd know. I grew up with him."

He grins and shakes his head. "It's a wonder you survived this long."

"He means well. Just remember that. He rarely acts with spite unless someone else instigates it."

We're in the launch bay now, and it looks like most of the team is here already, getting onboard.

Pietro stops in the doorway and pulls me back by my hand, giving me a troubled look. "Be careful out there, okay? I've got this horrible feeling that I won't see you again."

I nod, bringing my other hand around to rest on his too. "I'll be fine. You be careful too." He nods.

His hands are warm.


	6. Chapter 6

"We're here." Tony says from the pilot's seat. "We're in stealth mode, so Ultron shouldn't be able to see us coming. But once we step foot outside, all bets are off. What's our play, Cap'n?"

"Ultron knows we're coming." Steve says. "Odds are, we'll be riding into heavy fire. and that's what we signed up for. But the people of Sokovia, they didn't. So our priority is getting them out. All they want is to live their lives in peace. And that's not going to happen today. But we can do our best to protect them. And we can get the job done. We find out what Ultron's been building, we find Romanoff, and we clear the field. Keep the fight between us." He pauses and furrows his brows. "Ultron thinks we're monsters. That we're what's wrong with the world. This isn't just about beating him. It's about whether he's right." He lets that sink in. "Are you ready?"

I stand up from the floor. "Ready." I say quietly. One by one the rest of the team stands too, if they were not doing so already.

"You all have your assignments already. Stark, Vision, you're going after Ultron. Stall as long as you can, draw him away from the rest of us. Prolong the fight as long as possible to give the people a chance to escape first. Banner, you're going after Romanoff. Make sure she's okay, bring her back to the jet if need be, or find Sydney if she's injured, help in the evacuation if you can. Romanoff is your priority. Thor, you're going to find out what Ultron's been building, and destroy if it possible. If we can foil his plans now, we'll have a one up on him later. The rest of us, Maximoffs, Sydney, Barton, myself, are going to start the evacuation. What's the best way to get the general alarm out?" He asks the twins.

"I can make them leave." Wanda says, twirling a little red energy around her hands. "But only a few at a time. The police could sound an emergency broadcast, but only from the station. And Ultron might hear it too."

"That's a risk we're going to have to take. We'll discuss it more on the way. Avengers…" he pauses. "Time to go." Tony flips the switch and opens the rear hatch, letting the team file out into the muddy clearing outside. The quinjet is just behind a copse of trees, which should shield it from view of the fortress above. Stealth mode only makes it undetectable on radar, not invisible to the naked eye.

Tony, Vision, and Thor take off into the air towards the fortress. Banner looks after them then looks back awkwardly at Cap. "I can't… I… I'll walk." He starts jogging up the hill.

Steve grins a little then turns back to the rest of us. "You all have your orders. Get everyone out as fast as possible. You know this city better than anyone else on the team. Use that now."

Pietro nods and disappears in a flash of blue, and Wanda starts conjuring her powers and directing it all over the city, through doors and windows, into houses and people. Soon after, people start trickling out, silently moving in the same direction, towards their salvation. A closer look shows signs of the mind control on them, just the faintest haze of red around their eyes being the giveaway.

I follow the crowd as they walk, trying to figure out where they're going. Because whatever Wanda is doing, these people will take the most direct and fastest way out of the city.

"There's another way out of the city." I say as we walk. Steve looks at me, expecting me to continue.

"When I was here last year, during the riots. Pietro helped me escape before the borders closed. There's a mountain pass that leads into Austria, just over there behind the fortress."

"We might need to use it if things get sticky. But didn't you say the borders were closed? How do you know this pass is still clear?"

"I don't. But the twins might know. It's just a suggestion."

"Thanks. Any other idea, please speak up." There's a bridge up ahead, where everyone is getting bottlenecked and traffic is slowing. But just on the other side the road opens up and connects to the main highway leading out of town.

The bridge looks easy enough to climb, if need be. I'll have to tell Barton. He prefers high spots to shoot and keep lookout. But right now he's with Wanda, keeping watch while she directs the civilians away. It takes a lot of concentration for her to do that.

There's another bridge a hundred meters or so downstream that also has people flowing over it to safety. And vaguely, another one further down from that.

There's a whoosh behind me and I turn in time to see the last of the blue contrails fade away. "That's done. The broadcast is out. The police are now directing traffic as well."

Steve nods. "I'll stay here and direct this bridge. You two, keep-" There's a rumble underneath our feet and then an sentry ruptures through the ground, glaring at us in as much as can, and then scrambling towards us once it's free of the ground. Pietro runs forward and smashes that one, but another quickly takes its place. There are dozens more throughout the street coming up in a like manner, causing panic now that the threat is out in the open. Behind me is another whoosh and I see more taking into the sky from the stream. I run forward and look over the side. More are coming up out of the riverbed and climbing the side of the rock face towards us.

Behind me, Steve starts smashing them and blocking attacks with his shield. I shrink down a little bit behind a car, trying to work up my courage.

I'm so glad Tony gave me his bracer. How does this thing work again? There's a red button on the inside, next to my skin and I press it, and sure enough the thing lights up.

Tony gave me a quick rundown on the plane. Making a fist then opening it initiates the repulsor. I do so now and the bracer reaches out to cover the palm of my hand, and the circle lights up. The holographic interface comes on in front of my eye too, and lines up several potential targets.

I pick the one that's trying to sneak up on Steve, lining up my hand with the line in front of my eye that helps me aim. Pressing in my thumb fires the repulsor, and the hologram's aim is true. The sentry takes the hit and crumples to the ground.

Wanda and Barton run around the corner now, firing arrows and energy at will. Wanda runs to the front of line and puts up some sort of shield across the bridge, preventing the sentries from reaching the people behind her. I pull a few stragglers away and make sure they're heading in the right direction, which oddly enough would have been the wrong direction just a few moments ago.

"Get off the bridge." She urges, turning to look behind her. At that moment, another one shoots at her and breaks through her defenses, knocking her to the ground.

I fire at the robot that got her and hit it after the second try, sending it spinning to the ground in much the same way she just did.

"Are you alright?" I ask, pulling her up. Before she can answer, another, bigger rumble starts beneath our feet. This is more along the lines of an actual earthquake rather than a Graboid. There's dust rising into the sky in a circle around the city, which sets me even more on edge. Whatever Ultron's planning, it's happening now. The line of approaching dust reaches us and the bridge in front of us cracks and falls away. It looks like the entire city around is is collapsing into a massive hole in the earth, but after a moment the dust settles away and I get a clearer picture.

The earth isn't collapsing. The city is rising.

"Do you see the beauty of it?" Ultron himself asks, his voice a thundering force that rises above even the sound of the crumbling ground. It's coming from everywhere at once, every robot in the city speaking in the same voice. "The inevitability. You rise, only to fall." I haven't heard him speak since the first night at the tower, but he's come a long ways since then. No longer the tangled Frankenstein's monster of wires and circuits, but making death and destruction look elegant and aesthetic. Oh, how the tables have turned.

"You. Avengers, you are my meteor. My swift and terrible sword and the earth will crack with the weight of your failure. Purge me from your computers, turn my own flesh against me. It means nothing. When the dust settles, the only thing living in this world will be metal."

"I should find a stable, secure place and start setting up a first aid station." I tell Cap as he smashes another robot to pieces.

"Do it." He says, turning and throwing his shield at another one further away. "Things are only going to get worse now and we're going to need the help. We'll send any civilians your way." I start running down the street, dodging around and avoiding robots.

There's another whoosh behind me and Pietro appears right next to me, crouched behind a car and watching a group of five robots a few meters away.

"The market is clear for now, and stable. That's where most of the people are going. You can set up there. I'll take you." We both stand crouched beneath the car and he reaches out for me.

This time, I close my eyes. I can't see the city swirling past me, so it doesn't affect me as much. I barely even feel the movement except for the inertia at the end when he sets me down.

"I'll tell anyone I find to come here." He says, racing off again before I can reply. I shrug my backpack off and dump the contents over a table in the middle of the room. This looks to be a department store, with various clothing items and electronics displayed on tables across the space. They will make good workstations. Looking down at the gauntlet, I stretch my hand out straight then make a tight fist, then relax. The part over my palm retracts again.

"Does anyone here have any medical experience?" I say in a loud voice to the crowd in the foyer. Three people step forward, two doctors and a nurse. "Good, I'm going to need the help. Start triaging people into groups, and bring the worst in here. I'll start setting up the supplies.

"Cap, you got incoming." Tony says over the comms.

"Incoming already came in." Steve wheezes back. Oops. "Stark, you worry about bringing the city back down safely. The rest of us have one job. Tear these things apart. You get hurt, hurt them back. You get killed, walk it off."

Pietro zooms back in and organizes all the supplies into neat piles before I even realize he's there. "The police will tell everyone on the streets to come here. I spoke to them."

"Thanks. Is there anywhere else where people are getting holed up?"

"I'll keep my eyes open." Then he's gone again.

"Miss?" Someone says, and I turn around to speak to them. It's the nurse, a young, thin, blonde woman who seems rather timid and shy but has lots of skill and will act without hesitating. "One of them, hit by one of those… things. It's bad, and a bit out of my skill range."

"Let's go then." I say, rushing out with her. An older man, perhaps sixty, who was unable to dodge out of the line of fire. Took a beam to the side, much like Barton did last week.

"Let's get him inside. We really need a stretcher of some kind, but we'll have to make do for now. On three. One, two-" Her and I each lift an end of the blanket he was laid out on and shuffle him inside. Once he's on the table I cleared out, I cut away his shirt and look at the wound.

"Miss?" The nurse prompts me again, holding out some gloves and an apron.

"Thanks." I say, taking them from her.

"What else do you need?" She asks as I put them on.

"Saline solution, gauze, scissors, tape, antibiotic cream." She grabs the listed items from the stacks and lays them out nearby.

Just like Barton's wound, this is wide but not deep, so I can't do much more than keep pressure on it and stop the bleeding. His jacket was thick and took most of the blast, thankfully. If only I could find a way to miniaturize the regeneration cradle…

I clean the dirt out as best I can and press the gauze in, taping it down tightly enough to keep pressure when I can't. I'm sure there will be more people pouring in any minute now.

"Alright, that's all I can do. Have someone keep pressure on that bandage. Who's next? And where are the doctors?"

The woman beckons to a group of young men nearby and says something in Sokovian to them. They nod and come forward, heaving the injured man off the table again and taking him aside. One of them keeps pressure on the wound just like I said.

"The doctors are already with other people, and I'll find someone else." She rushes off outside again. I take the brief respite to clear up the area and prepare for the next patient.

She's back again soon, with a young couple in tow. The woman has a piece of metal sticking out of her shoulder and dripping blood on the ground as the man carries her. I grab one of the shirts I shoved off the table and lay it back down, to offer a barrier. It looks like a thin metal rod pierced through her shoulder and it sticking out on both sides.

"I need something to cut it with." I look at my supplies but there's nothing I can use. "Do you know where we can find wire cutters? Anything to cut this off near the wound and slide it out. Wait a minute, Pietro?" I activate my comms. "Pietro, come in." He runs back into the room, questioning look on his face, paling slightly as he sees the bloody mess in front of me. "I need to cut this. Bolt cutters, tin snips, anything you can find. Go." He rushes off without another word, returning in just a few seconds with a pair of cutters. "Thank you." I say.

"Police are stationed outside to protect everyone in here." He says before rushing off again.

The woman is getting sleepy now from the painkillers I gave her, which is good, because this is going to hurt a lot. I cut the metal rod off right next to her skin on and start pulling it through from the other side once I made sure there were no sharp edges or shrapnel. She moans slightly, but I just tug it a little harder and then it comes free.

Now comes the tricky part. The worst thing about these kinds of wounds is that the object that's causing the problem in the first place slows down the internal bleeding that can cause another big problem. But it's not like I can just leave the metal inside her body.

I get an idea and take out two chest seals. Normally these are for severe chest wounds that compromise the chest cavity, but I think I can use them to keep enough pressure inside the hole to slow the bleeding until we can get this woman to a professional.

" _Stark, what have you got for me?_ " Steve asks over comms.

" _Well, nothing great. Maybe a way to blow up the city. That'll keep it from impacting the surface if you guys can get clear._ " Tony says. I lose my grip on the package I was holding and drop it, startled by this news. Blow the city?

" _I asked for a solution, not an escape plan._ " Steve says.

" _Impact radius is getting bigger every second. We're going to have to make a choice._ "

"Okay, that's all I can do for her." I'm about to call for the next, but I see Cap and Romanoff standing outside and I decide to go ask them how things are going first.

"I'll be right back," I say to the nurse. "What's your name?"

"Irina." She says. "I'll get the next one ready."

As I'm rushing outside to where the two supersoldiers are standing, another voice comes over the radio. " _Glad you like the view, Romanoff. It's about to get better._ " A massive structure rises from the dust just clear of the city, revealing itself to be a SHIELD helicarrier.

"I thought all the helicarriers were destroyed?" I ask Steve as I fall into place next to him. Pietro sprints, at a normal pace mind you, onto the other side of Romanoff, mouth agape at this turn of events.

" _Nice, right? Pulled her out of mothballs with a couple of old friends. She's dusty, but she'll do._ " The bays in the side of the helicarrier open and four lifeboats soar over to the city.

"This is SHIELD?" Pietro asks, a giant smile on his face.

"This is what SHIELD is supposed to be." Steve answers.

"This is not so bad."

"Let's load them up." Steve says, turning to me. I nod and rush back into the market. Irina comes out to meet me, eyes flitting to Steve for a second then back to me.

"Let's get the most severely injured out first. We're resuming the evacuation. Get that woman on the boat first." I say, gesturing to the woman I just finished with. Irina nods and conveys the instructions to the rest of the people there, moving the most severely injured people on board first.

"You should go with them and continue working on board. I'll stay here and head up evacuations and first aid from this side." I tell the two doctors. "Go!" They leave without hesitation, grabbing some gear and helping along the most severely injured people. Of course, others from the square are rushing ahead and getting on as fast as they can, but there's enough space for everyone. The next lifeboat sets down just outside the doors and Irina and I rush another woman on a blanket onto this empty one, Wanda ushering the rest of the people in after us.

Irina follows me off the boat and stands ready for more instruction. "You should go with the rest of them, get out now." I tell her. "You've done well. Thank you." She nods and gives me a ghost of a smile before running back onto the lifeboat just before the gates close.

In the sky above the helicarrier, more robots are swarming the command center and the lifeboats fleeing the city. Rhodey and Tony take them out before they can do any damage.

Another run of the lifeboats sees most of the people from the market gone. Just in time, too because there are other things to worry about.

" _They're coming for the core._ " Thor says over the comms.

" _Rhodey, get the rest of those people on board that carrier._ "

" _On it._ "

" _Avengers, time to work for a living._ "

" _Tony, give me a ride?_ " I ask as he flies past. Cap already took off running and I won't even try to keep up with him.

" _You help Rhodey out from the ground. Get everyone on board. We can handle this._ "

" _You need the help._ " I say. Usually I can goad him into anything, in fact, in a normal situation I'd be the one talking him out of doing something, not into doing something.

" _You only have-_ " Whoosh. "One repulsor, okay, so you're not going to be able to do- wait, how did you- gah, Sonic, way to back me up." In the middle of Tony's sentence Pietro came and brought me to the core.

"What's the drill?" Natasha asks as she steps into her place in line.

"This is the drill." Tony says, gesturing to the core inside our little circle. "If Ultron gets a hand on the core, we lose." The Hulk crashes in, last one there, to smash a robot to pieces and stand with us.

Ultron lowers into view a few hundred meters outside the church. "Is that the best you can do?" Thor challenges from the front of the line. Ultron raises one hand up and hundreds of bots start swarming down on him, and us. Maybe I _should_ have stayed back at the market with with the boats.

"You had to ask." Steve says as he turns to glare at Thor.

"This is the best I can do." Ultron says, raising his arms out in triumph. "This is exactly what I wanted. All of you against all of me. How could you possibly hope to stop me?"

"Well, like the old man said," Tony says, glancing at Cap. Cap looks back at him in confusion, no doubt wondering why Tony is mentioning him. "Together."

The bots start swarming, all at once, limited only by the number of them that can fit through the windows of the church at once. If it wasn't for that bottleneck, they could quite literally just climb on us and crush us.

Tony wasn't selling me short when he tried to talk me out of this. Compared to the rest of them, I'm all bark and no bite. I fall into the center of the line and stand inches away from the core, firing at those who manage to break through or come in over the ground-limited Avengers, and any other who provide a clear shot for me. Vision, Thor, and Tony keep a barrier overhead while the rest keep the fight on the ground.

Surprisingly few break through the defenses.

Ultron gets tired of this game and comes in to finish the job himself. Vision charges head on to confront him and they battle in the air above, so I sink down a little lower to stay out of the line of fire. But then Vision creates a beam with the infinity stone, and Thor slams him with some lightning, and Tony uses repulsors, and the combined force starts melting the vibranium. I clamber over the wall and fire my repulsor at him too for good measure, small as it may be.

It's working, and parts of the metal melt and fly away from him. Once we stop, he staggers up to his feet, much the same as that very first night in the tower. "You know, with the benefit of hindsight-" He never gets to finish that sentence, because the Hulk crashes in and punches him so hard he flies back several hundred meters, past the buildings beyond. Then Hulk turns to the sentries to the side, and they turn tail and run like a mouse with a cat on it's tail.

"They'll try to leave the city." Thor warns as the sentries take off into the sky.

"We can't let them, not even one." Tony says in a panicked voice. "Rhodey."

"I'm on it." But Vision is already going after them, gaining on them and overtaking them, using some sort of phasing ability to tear them apart from the inside before Rhodey can even get to them. "Okay, _what?_ "

I grin and run back inside the church. "We gotta move out." Steve says. "Even I can tell the air is getting thin. You guys get to the boats. I'll sweep for stragglers. Be right behind you."

"What about the core?" Barton asks.

"I'll protect it." Wanda offers. "It's my job."

Barton gives her the barest of nods before turning and walking towards the door. "Nat. This way." The three of them run through the door to the street. I start to follow, but hang back to ask Wanda a question. Pietro runs in and destroys a sentry that was creeping up behind me.

"Get the people on the boats." She tells him.

"I'm not going to leave you here."

"I can handle this." She says, and subsequently destroys a sentry flying towards her. Pietro shrugs. "Come back for me when everyone else is off, not before. You understand?"

He turns back towards her with a snarky grin on his face, "You know, I'm twelve minutes older than you."

"Oh, good lord, not that again." I roll my eyes. "Are you sure you don't want someone to stay with you?" I ask.

"Go." She says. Pietro scoops me up again and races us to the market again. All but a dozen people or so are on the boats, several of them SHIELD detail assigned to protect the lifeboats. Clint and Nat pull up in a very dusty Audi not long after. She goes off to give Banner a lullaby, Clint gets on a boat, and Pietro and I get in with him. Just before the boat takes off, Clint jumps off and takes off for the market again.

"Wait, where are you going?" I ask, running after him for a few paces. There's another lifeboat twenty meters down we can get on. I can see now, there's a young boy in the rubble, who was missed in the dust. They don't call Clint 'Hawkeye' for nothing.

The quinjet comes out of nowhere and starts firing bullets all around the market. I can barely make out Ultron in the seat of the jet. How the heck did he manage to find that thing? More importantly, the bullets are going right for Clint and the boy. I scream and rush forward, raising my repulsor, not that it could do much. Rubble shifts under my feet and I go down, rolling my ankle in the process. It happened so fast that I misfire the repulsor, and it goes way off into the line of bullets instead of towards the quinjet.

I see a flash of blue out of the corner of my eye as I fall down. By the time I get my bearings and push myself up, the bullets have stopped and the quinjet has moved on. I pull myself upright and look at Clint, but instead of seeing him I see the car in front of him. And I see Pietro, the once blue blur and his blue shirt now covered in a growing stain of red. I start screaming again and try to run towards him, but I can hardly stand at all on my foot. I'm sure I've torn a ligament or broken it. But I ignore the pain and keep going, falling to my knees beside him at the same time he crashes forward to the ground. I push him over, trying to get a response but it's already too late.

A sob escapes me and I look up at the sky and the quinjet which is fast disappearing from view. It's pointless, I know, but even so I start firing my repulsor at the jet, knowing the beams will never reach it. _Why?_

Steve rushes over and grabs me around the chest, forcing my hand down and to stop firing. He sits right behind me and holds my hands against me, stopping me from taking any further action. Clint reaches down and feels for a pulse too, looking at Cap and shaking his head a little when he comes to the same conclusion as me.

Clint scoops up the boy again and takes off for the lifeboat. Steve lets me go, and I sit there in a trance as he picks up Pietro's body and heads in the same direction. After a few paces he realizes I'm not following him and turns back to me. "Sydney... " he pauses, not continuing the sentence until I look up at him. "We need to go."

I stumble to my feet and take a few steps towards him, limping even worse now that the adrenaline rush has passed. Clint sees the struggle and runs back towards me, supporting my weak side and helping me hobble towards the boat, just in time. No sooner do we step on board than another rumble goes through the ground and the city starts falling away from us at an alarming speed.

Steve lays Pietro down on the floor in front of where Clint and I collapse onto a seat. I sink down onto the floor, pulling over a first aid kit and going to work even though there's nothing more I can do. But maybe, just maybe. Maybe his super speed isn't limited to how fast he can run. Maybe he could heal that fast too. But only if his brain and heart can keep going that long. Maybe if I just try hard enough…

There are a few chest seals in the kit, and I take them all. Only one wound looks like it could have been the fatal shot. Thankfully, all of the bullets went clean through. I won't have to dig around for shrapnel.

"Syd," Clint prompts me. And he does it again. Finally he shakes my shoulder, trying to get my attention. I ignore him. There's an explosion from somewhere beneath us. "Stark, it's no use." He says finally. I ignore him again.

"What's she doing?" Steve asks from behind me as I start putting the chest seals on and doing compressions.

"It's pointless." Clint says.

"Well, maybe it will help her cope. Somehow. She's a medic, after all."

I give up soon after and just sit there next to him, with my knees against my chest and his hand in mine, right next to my heart, as if I can transfer my own life force to his.

His hands are cold.

Vision flies up a few minutes later, Wanda in his arms. She must have been in the city when it went down. She takes one look at Pietro and her whole face contorts in pain. She falls to her knees almost the same way I did, running a hand lightly over him and looking at him with such longing, that if I could I would tear heaven and earth apart just to bring him back for her. It's strange, how she spent so much effort in getting in everyone's heads and showing them their worst fear, and now in the end it was hers that came true. I let his hand fall and scooch closer to her, as much for her comfort as for mine.

She just sits there in silence for minutes, never taking her eyes off him. Then she looks up at me, then to the sky with a sad smile before turning back to me. Tears are streaming down her face now, and she's choking back sobs. "I'm older now." She gets out before collapsing into my shoulder and crying so hard that she can't tell that I am too.


	7. Chapter 7

Days after the battle, Tony calls me up to the shop in the tower. I seriously consider skipping out and going somewhere else, but if I don't show my face soon people will start coming to find me.

"Hey Squid." He says when I limp through the door. I tore some ligaments when I fell, and have been using that as an excuse to stay in my room and avoid everyone.

"Tony," I say, not arguing the use my my nickname today.

"Everything okay?" He asks, giving me a sideways glance.

"You tell me." I say, walking closer and leaning on the table. "What's going on?"

"Well, the team got together yesterday. Most of us, anyway. Banner's still MIA. But we decided on a few changes. I thought you'd like to hear about it."

"Go ahead." I say, sitting in a chair and leaning my elbow on the table. Tony seems to be working on another suit, and there are parts everywhere. I grab a few tools and start assembling a flare ejector.

He says his next words carefully, as if he's rehearsed them several times before now. "Well, the team's being dissolved."

" _What?_ " I say, tools slipping and causing a short in the circuitry. "Why?"

"Different reasons. Thor's going back to Asgard. Barton has his family to worry about. Banner's gone, and who knows when he'll be back."

"And what about you?"

He fiddles with the tool in his hand, looking at it, the walls, the table, anywhere but me. "You remember, uh," He puts the tool down and sits in a chair right across from me. "Remember the vision I had, back in Sokovia? Before Ultron. When we got the scepter."

"You said you saw the end of the Avengers." I say, realization dawning in my eyes.

"Not just the end. Not like this. Everyone was dead. Everyone but me. And there was nothing I could do to stop it. And somehow I just knew that I caused it. I mean, I wasn't dead like everyone else so that's pretty telling."

"Tony," I say, reaching out and putting my hand on his knee. He jumps a little and looks at my hand, then puts his on mine.

"I just think that maybe I should stay out of this one."

"But, what happens if there's another crisis? I think people need the Avengers more than we think."

"Yeah, well, that's the good part I guess." He says as he walks across the room and grabs two cans of soda. He hands one to me and keeps the other. "Cap and Romanoff are going to create a new team. The New Avengers. The tower is kind of a wreck, and I'm not on the team anyways, so I'm building them a new base upstate." He plops a folder down on the table in front of me. I open it up and pick up the top photo, a Stark Industries warehouse that's been around since the 40's. Must have been one that Dad built. Underneath are renovation plans and concepts.

"Tony, these are amazing." I say as I look over the concepts. "I think this will be really good for them. And the location is perfect. It's out of the way and private, and if anything ever goes down, there won't be any civilians nearby to get hurt."

"Kinda what I was thinking too. Anyway, construction starts immediately, and it should be all finished by the end of the month."

"That's great." I say, closing the folder and sliding it back towards him. "Um…"

"Hm?" he says, taking a sip of his soda.

"Well, I need to ask you something, but you aren't going to like it."

"Oh? Why's that?"

"Okay, well in my vision, I saw the accident." His eyebrows go up in surprise. There's no need to elaborate what I mean by 'the accident.' It's what we've always used to refer to when our parents died.

"Okay." He says, a bit gruffly now. We try to avoid the subject as much as possible.

"I know I was just a baby so there's no way I can remember what happened, but I saw it and I just want to make sure I know what's real and what's not."

He looks at his soda can and takes another gulp. "Should've grabbed the scotch for this one." he mutters. "Let's hear it."

"Okay, well it was cold and snowy. That much is probably true, because it would have been December, right?"

"That's right," he says, sitting stiffly in his chair.

"And it was near a bridge. But the car was smashed into a tree, which kept it from going into the water. I was in the backseat. Mom was trying to reach out for me and got crushed in the impact."

"How could you possibly know all that?" Tony whispers, his face pale.

"So it's true?" I ask, and he nods. "So it was my fault." I say, feeling a chill go down me. I pull my knees into my chest.

"We'll never know exactly what happened." Tony says. "It could have been anything, or a combination of things."

"So you don't blame me for it then?" I ask.

"No. Maybe at one point I might have. But you were barely a month old when that happened. You couldn't have acted any differently. If it wasn't for that mind-meddling mutant you wouldn't even remember it."

I look up at him. "How did she know what happened if I didn't?"

He opens his mouth and closes it, tilting his head and furrowing his brow. "That's… that's a good question. Maybe you should ask her about it. You can bring her the news too."

"The news?" I ask.

"The New Avengers?" He sasses, handing me the folder again. "Go talk to her, then come back and we'll talk suits."

"I'm glad you're staying Iron Man, even if you're quitting the Avengers." I tell him.

"I tried getting rid of the suits once, but it didn't work out. But what I meant is a suit for you. Being a medic is useful, but you need more on the resume to be an Avenger."

"Wait, what?" I ask.

"You. Avenger. New team. You need a suit. Or at least something better than one dinky little repulsor. Now go talk to the Maximoff girl, and start thinking of codenames."

When I get to the door I peek back in at him. "Tony?" He looks up at me. "Thanks."

After looking around for a while I find Wanda up in the lab where the destroyed remains of the Cradle still sit. She turns her head in my direction as I come in, and hastily gets to her feet once her eyes reach my face.

"Sydney, you're here, I'm so glad to see you." She bursts. "I haven't seen you since we got back here."

"Sorry," I say, looking at the floor. "Just been sleeping off the battle. I'm supposed to stay off my feet."

"We have a lot to talk about." She says, pulling me back to where she was sitting, the one place in the room that seems to be empty of broken glass. I slide down the wall to sit next to her on the floor.

"That we do." I say.

"I'm sorry for what happened in the shipyard. It will take a long time for the team to forgive me for what I did to them."

"You've already done a lot to bridge that gap. Especially to me. I think we're even now. But I do want to ask you something about that dream… thing… you made me see. How did you know?"

"Know? I found it inside your mind. Your worst fears."

"No, but the details. Wait, do you know what it is that I saw?"

"I know. I saw them all. Yours, theirs. Everything."

"Here's the thing I don't get. I was too young to remember the accident. But I talked to Tony and told him about it and he said that what I saw was accurate. So how is that possible?"

She shrugs. "It must have come from his mind then. I got to him when he took the scepter."

"Right… so you already had seen all his memories and fears and then used that to construct mine since we have the same history. Makes sense. Sorry, it's just been bothering me for a while. I won't bring it up again."

"Some things are better left in the past. But I think to put things behind us we need to confront them first, don't you?"

I nod. "I think you're exactly right." I sigh. "I was going to ask whether you wanted the bad news or good news first, but you beat me to it. Tony sent this for you." I hand her the folder.

"What is it?" She asks, taking it and opening it. "Where is this place?" She holds up the photo of the old warehouse.

"The team is being dissolved." I say. "Everyone's going their separate ways. Tony quit too. So that means Avengers HQ needs a new facility…" I feel a smile tugging at my lips.

She looks at the photo again, and then pulls out the new blueprints. "But why would they need a new facility if the team is gone?"

"The old team is gone." I say, pulling out the roster list. "But this is for the _New_ Avengers." She takes the paper from me and reads the list, a smile breaking out on her face too.

"Is this real?" She asks, just staring at the paper.

"It's real. I asked the same thing at first."

"It's perfect. I only wish…" Her smile fades, and my own disappears with it.

"That Pietro were on the list too?" I finish, knowing where she was going with that.

"Yes. I miss him so much." She says, closing the folder and holding it close to her chest. "My whole life, he was there, and now there's just this hole where he used to be." I know what she's talking about. They were two halves of the same whole, being twins. I even noticed many occasions when they spoke of themselves collectively instead of individually.

I don't know how to reply to her without sounding pale in comparison, so I just sit there in silence with her as the time stretches on between words.

"He never got to tell you, did he?" She says, putting the folder on the floor in front of her.

"Tell me what?" I ask.

"His feelings for you."

"What?" I ask, my voice cracking a little. "Wanda, that's crazy. We hardly knew each other."

"But I knew him. You were different than anyone else he knew. He never stopped thinking of you. So what if you didn't know each other well? You could have if you had the chance. That's what you're missing, the could-have-been."

"Well, we'll never know now." I say, echoing Tony. "But thanks for telling me."

"He would have wanted you to know." She says, picking up the folder again. "How long before we move to the new base?"

"I don't know." I admit. "Renovations just started. Who else is on the list anyway? I didn't get a chance to read it." She hands me the paper. Steve and Natasha are team leaders, like Tony said. And five new recruits. Sam Wilson, Rhodey, the Vision, Wanda, and myself. "Not a bad team." I say. I hear footsteps coming towards us. A few people in SHIELD jackets, standing just outside the room.

"Sorry, we're here to clean up all this." One says, gesturing to the broken equipment in front of us.

Wanda scoops up the folder from in front of her and helps me to my feet. "I'll go find the others and pass the news on." Wanda says, getting up and pointing to the folder. "See you later."

"Bye," I say, going out another door and heading back down the lab to work on the suit.

It may be the end of an era, but a new beginning is just around the corner.

~A~S~S~E~M~B~L~E~

At the end of the month the new facility is ready and everyone is moved in. We got here a few days early to get used to the new place, and today is the first day of training.

Tony and I came to a compromise about the suits. I didn't like his, because even though we're nearly the same height it just felt big and cumbersome to me. I designed my own lightweight version of it, based off the small gauntlet he originally gave me.

The base form is made out a synthetic mesh he and I came up with, fused with vibranium salvaged from Ultron's drill. It more closely resembles Natasha's suit than Tony's, being molded to my shape like a catsuit. But it's stronger than normal kevlar body armor at a fraction the density, and over the base form are more aesthetic, thicker plates.

Just like the gauntlet, the hand folds back with a flick of the wrist for easy movement. I still want to primarily be a medic and focus on defense and extractions rather than actual fighting. Even so, Tony made me a full, female version of his suit that admittedly feels much better to use but I hopefully won't be needing. It's in the armory, and won't go anywhere. I still need to practise my flying skills.

I'm using the spare time to walk around the building and familiarize myself with the layout of the building, also to loosen up my ankle and get it ready for some hard training soon. Steve offered to teach me some hand to hand combat skills, but even though he's more relenting than Natasha, I doubt he'll go _that_ easy on me. Fury and Doctor Cho have already warned me that I might have to sit out a few more weeks, not only because of my injury, but because the new training is supposed to focus on teams, pairing each recruit with another recruit and learning to complement each other in battle.

Guess who the fifth wheel is.

When I get to the lounge I see a hunched over figure sitting on the couch. She looks sad still, even though I thought she was starting to adjust. it looks so wrong to see her like this in such a bright, open room. As I watch, her body starts shaking, so I step through the glass door and call her name.

"Wanda?" I can't ask her if she's okay. The answer to that is pretty clear. I walk closer and sit next to her, putting my arm around her and trying to get her to calm down so she can breathe. I haven't seen her this upset since the battle itself.

"I- he- this song-" She chokes out, showing me the iPod in her hand.

"Sad song?" I ask. She nods and holds out one side of the earbuds to me.

 _Cause it's my heart that's been missing you, and it's the heart I need to listen to,_

 _And it's been singing songs for tender dreams, the ones you sang to help us sleep_

 _And one day I will sing those songs, sing them til they sleep_

 _Just like you sang to me, just like you sang, sang to me_

 _From the day that I met you I stopped feeling afraid_

 _In your arms I feel safe, in your arms I feel safe_

 _From the day that I met you, I stopped feeling afraid_

 _In your arms I feel safe, in your arms_

 _I miss you so, I miss you so, and I'll miss you til I'm old_

 _I'll miss you so, I'll miss you so, but my fears will fade, I know_

 _Cause it's my heart that you helped to build and love is my compass still_

 _Love will fill the holes I've got cause you will never hold me but I_

 _Know that you are with me and I know that you're at peace_

 _Cause you let us sing you to sleep_

 _You let us sing your heart to sleep_

 _From the day that I met you I stopped feeling afraid_

 _In your arms I feel safe, in your arms I feel safe_

 _From the day that I met you, I stopped feeling afraid_

 _In your arms I feel safe, in your arms I feel safe_

 _And I know that you are with me and I know that you're at peace_

 _Cause you let us sing your soul, your mind and heart to sleep_

 _From the day that I met you I stopped feeling afraid…_

I reach over and hit the pause button. "Maybe we shouldn't listen to sad songs just yet." I say, sniffing back tears and wiping my eyes.

"I just can't get used to him being gone. I thought I was okay, but then this came on and it was like I could still feel him here, see him run by. I'll never be the same without him."

"Supposedly, we take on the personality and traits of the people we associate with most. You have just as much of him in you as you do yourself, but now that part of you is dying too. It takes a long time to recover from something like that. So, no, you aren't going to be the same, but that doesn't mean you have to let go of him completely. None of us will ever forget him, you can be sure of that." I pull her closer to me and wrap my arms around her, trying to send as much love as I can to make her feel better.

"Thank you," She says, holding me like a lifeline in her tidal wave of tears.

There's a sudden gust of wind, and I furrow my brow. Was one of the windows left open? But when I look up, there's a flash of blue and a very familiar voice.

"Wanda, no, what's wrong?" He says, kneeling in front of her and taking her hands.

"Pietro!" She screams, lunging forward and wrapping her arms around his neck.

"What?" I shriek, standing up so fast the couch shifts back a few inches. "But how...ow." I say, the sudden movement setting my ankle off again. "Ow." I say again as I shift my weight to my other side.

"I missed you so much." He says, standing up and spinning her around a few times. He puts her down and turns his gaze to me, smiling so bright it reaches his eyes too. "Both of you." Now he comes towards me and pulls me into him, holding me like he never wants to let go. He seems too real to be a hallucination, even down to the faint smell of wood smoke and alpine trees, but how else is this possible?

"How?" I simply ask again, pulling back and holding him at arm's length. "You can't possibly be here right now. It's impossible."

"Didn't Fury tell you?" he asks, furrowing his brows. He looks truly confused.

"I was going to wait until after training today, but you beat me up here." Fury says from the doorway. I spin around to look at him. "Now I already warned you once, if you don't slow down a little, I'll make you slow down."

"How?" I ask again.

"The exact details are classified, but a few years ago I put into place an eventuality for a situation like this. The original tests didn't go so well, but with the help of Doctor Cho, we think we've found a stable solution." he says, walking across the room and sinking down into an armchair. I sit back down onto my spot on the couch, next to Pietro and Wanda who hasn't let go of him since he appeared.

"But, I was there. He was _gone_. You were." I say, directing this last part to Pietro himself.

"I know." he says with a distant look. "I don't know how they did it."

"Like I said, classified." Fury smirks. "Stark, Wanda, you better keep an eye on him and make sure he rests like he's supposed to."

"I'm not letting him out of my sight." Wanda says, still wrapped around him.

"Good, and while you're at training Stark can look after him."

"Sir, my name is Sydney _Collins_ , not Stark." I say. "So I take it I'm not cleared for training?"

"Doctor Cho still feels you're not ready for any heavy training. There's also the matter of distributing teams. The current roster has Wanda and the Vision as a team, but now there's the option of putting the twins together and Sydney with the Vision. Personally I feel like we should go as planned, and have Pietro and Sydney join as a third team once they're back on par. Only one team gets held back this way. But Phase One focuses on individual skills anyway, so that's down the road. Just something to think about. Training starts soon, so you should get moving. We'll talk more later." he stands up and stretches, and the rest of us get up too.

Wanda sighs and lets go of Pietro, but as I suspected she doesn't go anywhere. "Can't I stay with him today?" She asks Fury.

"It's your first day," Pietro says. "I'll come and watch. I'll stay nearby." She nods and takes him by the arm as they walk out of the room.

"Keep a close eye on him." Fury says as we watch them walk away. "I have some concerns."

"Like what?" I ask, feeling a knot forming in my stomach.

"I don't know yet, just a feeling. But lend me an eye and let me know if anything happens. How are you holding up?" He asks, walking to the door and holding it open for me.

"I'm fine. Wishing I could be in training too…" I say with a hopeful smile.

He shakes his head. "Give it some time. You'll be in there before you know it. And then you'll be looking for a way out." I grin. He's probably right. We're on the catwalk above the training floor now. Vision and Rhodey are already down there, chatting while they wait.

Another whoosh goes by and Pietro appears with us. "I'm warning you kid, you better quit doing that." Fury says, glaring at Pietro with a look at would make most people shrink in their place. "I've got my eye on you." And then he turns and walks away.

"Odd fellow, isn't he?" Pietro asks, leaning on the balcony.

I laugh. "He keeps everyone in check." Steve and Natasha walk out of a door on the other side of the training floor. Sam Wilson, the Falcon, swoops down into place, and Wanda follows soon after.

"Avengers…" Steve says.

" _Assemble._ "

~~~~Extended Ending~~~~

Not long into the training session, Steve and Natasha spot us on the balcony and start pointing and talking to each other. The recruits notice this soon after and stop their session, all turning towards us. Pietro waves from the balcony and walks towards the stairs at the other end, walking down onto the training floor.

"Pietro?" Steve asks, blinking more often than usual and eyebrows together. Wanda smiles again. Natasha tils her head and her jaw drops, the most reaction I've ever seen on her.

Pietro stifles a grin and shrugs. "You told me to walk it off."

Steve's eyebrows go straight up.

"You didn't see that coming?"

Author's Note: The song Wanda was listening to is "In Your Arms" By Chef!Special. The first time I heard it I nearly burst into tears because it reminds me of Pietro and Wanda so much. It still gives me that reaction. A couple other good songs are "I Thought I Lost You" From Bolt and "I Will Follow You Into The Dark" by Death Cab For Cutie. As usual, I own nothing.

Also, now that I've ended the Age of Ultron story arc, I need more ideas on how to keep this gig going. Ideas are welcome and requested in the reviews/private messages!

And I'm sorry for giving you so many feels with the last chapter. I did it for a reason, you'll see, later on.


	8. Chapter 8

A few nights later I'm in bed, trying desperately to go to sleep when I hear soft footsteps from outside my door. The doorknob turns and someone enters, stepping closer to where I lay under the blankets. Just before the figure reaches me, I reach out and turn the table lamp on, illuminating the figure in the dark. It's Pietro, wrapped in a blanket like a mummy. He squints and turns away from the light I turn on, obviously a shock from the dark hallway outside. But I can still see how pale his face is and the dark circles under his eyes.

"Pietro, what's wrong?" I say, getting up out of bed and standing in front of him, the movement making my head spin. His only reply is stepping closer and plopping his head down on my shoulder. "C'mon, talk to me here. What's up?"

He mumbles something into my shoulder that I can't make out through the layers of fabric around his face.

"What?" I ask.

"Can't sleep." He says, turning his head so now his cheek on on my shoulder and his face is towards my face.

"Why not?" I ask, brushing some of his hair aside. He and I have spent a lot of time together the past few days, and I've noticed something's off. At first Wanda and I struggled to get him to stop running around everywhere, but he's been slowing down, and I don't think it's because of us.

He wiggles around and gets his arms free, opening up the blanket and pulling me into the cocoon too. He's warm, which makes a chill go through me after standing in the cold room.

"Did you try talking to Wanda?" I ask. "Maybe she can help you sleep." Her powers can be quite versatile.

"She's exhausted. I don't want to bother her if I can help it. She needs the rest." He has a point. Whenever the rest of the team isn't training, they're sleeping off their training.

"Still, if she can help you fall asleep, it probably wouldn't take very long."

"It's not falling asleep that's the problem." He says, turning so his face is down again.

"Bad dreams?" I ask, and he nods into my shoulder. "Wanna talk about it?" He shakes his head no. I take him around the waist and walk to the bed, sitting us both down on the edge of the mattress. As soon we we're both sitting down he puts his head back on my shoulder and wraps his arms around me again. I pull him closer and just sit there with him, trying not to think about falling asleep.

"It hurts." he says finally.

My eyes snap open. "What hurts?"

"Everything. It just feels wrong. My head hurts, and my body hurts, and it hurts to run, and the light hurts. I can still feel where the bullets went through. But my head hurts really bad right now."

"Did you go to Doctor Cho?" I ask. Maybe I should call Fury.

"No, I don't want to go. I just need to give it time, right?" He asks, echoing what Wanda and I have been telling him for days.

"Not if there's something legitimately wrong." I say. "We can go down to medical right now." I start to get up, but he pulls me back.

"Everyone's asleep, I don't want to bother them."

"Pietro," I start to argue.

"I don't want to go back. I don't like doctors much. Or scientists. Too much poking and prodding. They never want to stop." Probably a leftover of the experiments in Sokovia.

"What if I did it? Would it be okay then?"

His face turns into a grimace. "We'd still have to go all the way down there. I've already bothered you too much tonight." he lets go of me and moves for the door.

"I wasn't sleeping anyway." I say as I block his path.

"Why not?" he asks with a hint of humor on his face.

"My head hurts." I say with a smirk. "I should probably go down to medical and get some painkillers. These migraines are getting quite out of hand. Again."

He pads along behind me, stumbling on the trailing edge of his blanket a little. "You pretending to have a headache, I could take that as a mockery of my own pain." He teases.

"I wish I was pretending. I haven't been sleeping well either. The more tired I am, the worse and more frequent my headaches are." I lean against the door.

"I should go then, let you get some sleep. Sorry for bothering you." He tries to reach for the doorknob but I block him again.

"No, this is more important. I can look you over right now. We don't even have to go to the lab. I've got a scanner here." I almost walk over to get it, but I stop myself before I leave the door unguarded. I don't trust him not to run off.

He doesn't answer for a long time, just stands there with a frown, but then he sighs. "Okay. Where do you want me?"

"Right here." I say, patting the foot of the bed. He sits down with a scowl, watching me as I pull out the scanner. I smirk and push him back on the bed so he's sprawled out on his back.

"Mind if I…?" I trail off, hands just above the hem of his shirt. He shakes his head. I hesitate just a moment, probably putting a little too much effort into having a light touch as I grab the end of his shirt and slide it up his body. The first scar is just a few inches above the hem, and more are peppered all along his body up to his neck. I try not to wince as I see the one right above his heart, the one that I'm sure was the fatal shot. He takes the hem now and finishes pulling it above his head, tossing the piece of clothing aside somewhere in my room.

He won't look me in the eye now, and keeps fidgeting around. "Wanda hasn't seen them." he tells me, still not looking at me. "Do you think they'll fade?" I look down at the scars again, and run my thumb over one.

"Probably not," I say, deciding not to lie to him. "But it could be a lot worse."

"I saw you when it happened. Trying to run forward and shoot at Ultron. When you slipped, you misfired. The blast from your repulsor took out two of the bullets coming towards me. So yes, it could have been worse."

I'm stunned. I think back to that moment, something I've been actively avoiding since it happened. But I do vaguely remember a shot going off as I fell down. I guess he would know.

I take out the scanner and go over the scars, but they're healed over and there's no sign of rejection. I'm sure that the Cradle was involved in this somehow, but that wouldn't explain everything. Sure, it could have healed over the wounds, but there's no way it could have brought him back completely. What I'm more worried about is the headache he's complaining of. He sits up and I check him over, feeling around for any tender spots on his skull. He winces when I go over one spot on the back of his head.

"Right there?" I ask, trying not to lose track of that spot.

"Felt nice until then." he says. I scoff. I part his hair away to get a better look at that area, and what I find is even more puzzling. There's another scar here, not a bullet scar but an incision mark.

"There's a line here." I tell him. "Like someone cut you open. Did HYDRA ever do that?" We still don't know the full details of the experiment, and probably never will since all the data was wiped.

"No, not HYDRA." He says.

"But that must mean-"

"That it's new." he finishes.

"Fury did this?" I ask in shock. Pietro pulls away from my grasp and turns towards me, only now looking me in the eye again.

"It hurt even worse than what HYDRA did. Getting the powers, it felt like being torn apart inside, DNA changing and cells being remade, but that was just my body. What happened now is different. It was me, my very being, my soul, being torn apart and put back together. Wanda said she felt it too. She didn't know what it was, thought maybe it was just a memory of what happened, another nightmare, but it wasn't. It didn't even hurt to die. The bullets hurt, but dying was just a peaceful sleep and warmth everywhere, then coming back like being shoved out into the cold."

"That's… that's horrible." I say, sinking down onto the mattress next to him.

"It took days for the wounds to heal. And I felt the whole thing. It was like being shot from the inside out. And they had to keep bringing me back because I kept fading out, but the machine wouldn't work unless I was awake. That's what I dream about now. I didn't want Wanda to feel it. She can see everything in my head and it would just hurt her too. So I came here."

"What else can I do? How can I make it better?" I ask, reaching up and running my hands through his hair again.

He closes his eyes and gives me a faint smile. "Keep doing that," he says, breaking out into a full grin. "Feels nice. That always makes me sleep when Wanda does that."

"Promise me you'll go see Doctor Cho tomorrow." I say.

"Okay," he says in a soft, sleepy voice. "Can I stay here tonight?"

"Yeah, sure." I slide back into my spot and pull the covers back for him. He plops down on his stomach with his head right against my collarbone and arm draped across my waist. I turn out the light and start carding my fingers in his hair again, and before long his breathing evens out and he's fast asleep.

~A~S~S~E~M~B~L~E~

In the morning when I wake up, the sun is streaming through the windows onto my face. It's something I both love and hate about this place, the large windows make everything seem light and open, but the sun takes no mercy on those who want to sleep in.

I roll over and reach out to the other side of the bed to check on Pietro, but he's gone. This makes me sit straight up in bed. He was here, wasn't he? Or was Wanda playing mind tricks on me again? She still insists that Pietro has feelings for me, and I don't put it past her to orchestrate things herself if she got the inclination.

There are no extra blankets in my room and I doubt he would leave his shirt here when he left, but there's one more place I can look. I pick up my tablet and turn the screen on. The last scan was just as I remember, the tissue layers of one of the scars. So it did happen.

I amble down to the kitchen, in desperate need of coffee and more tylenol. My headache is still rearing its ugly head, albeit at a much more manageable level. One good night's sleep should see the end of it.

Wanda is sitting at the counter with an empty plate and glass of juice, folder in her other hand.

"Good morning Sydney." She says in a singsong voice, and when she turns to me her mouth breaks out into a smirk. "Did you and Pietro have a good night's sleep?"

I roll my eyes and walk around her to the coffeepot. "Did you?" I fire back.

"I always do, now anyway. I'm so happy my brother has found someone to spend his time with."

"He only came to my room because he didn't want to wake you up." I say, pouring a generous amount of coffeemate into my mug and turning to face her. Play it cool, play it cool…

"Still, it shows he trusts you. An important quality in any relationship." she grins and takes a sip of her own coffee.

"Oh please, you still aren't singing that old song, are you? Where is the little speed demon anyway?"

"He's hiding in the closet while I trick you into confessing your feelings for him." I scoff and whip open the closet door. He's not there.

"Really, Wanda?" I ask, starting to move beyond playful banter now.

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry. He left just before you came in. Actually, I think he's avoiding you for some reason." Her face darkens at this last part.

"Well, in that case, I'll just have to go find him." I say, chugging half of my remaining coffee and walking out the door on the far side of the room. "Any idea where he might be headed?"

"No, but if you want to hide in the closet I can probably lure him back-"

"That's okay, thanks," I grin before walking out the door.

"Hey wait!" She calls after me, leaning against the door frame. "You had a phone call earlier."

"Oh? Who was it?"

"The archer, Clint, and his wife. He wants you to call him back. I'll go see where my brother is while you call him." She walks off without another word.

I go back to the counter and dial Clint's number from my cell phone.

It rings four times.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Laura." I say. "It's Sydney."

"Oh, hi," She says. "Just a moment, I'm chasing after a few very hyper- don't you dare hit your sister- children. Let me grab Clint for you."

"Hey, Squid." Clint says a moment later.

"Bird Boy. What's up?" I'll forgive his use of my nickname one time and once only.

"Oh, busy with the kids. Now there's three of them. Did you see the pictures of Nathaniel?"

"I haven't. How old is he now?"

"Just under two weeks. I forgot how much trouble-" He goes into a violent coughing fit. "I mean, fun, they can be." I can almost imagine Laura glaring at him on the other end of the line.

"I'll have to make a trip out and see him sometime."

"That's actually what I wanted to talk to you about. Laura's parents can't handle a trip up here, so we were hoping to go down there to see them. We were hoping you could come and hang out with Coop and Lila for the week while we're away. I know Lila is really excited to see you again. You were a huge hit with them."

"Sounds fun, I'd love to. When are we talking?"

"Next week. So you'd be coming up this weekend, Friday preferably. Does that work?"

"It should. Let me check with Fury and Cho to make sure I'm still off duty." I start walking towards the training schedule hanging on the fridge.

"Still got a bum ankle, huh?"

"Yeah, it's still healing, but it doesn't bother me at all. Unless I move it at that angle. It should be fine for next week though. Let me talk to Fury and I'll text you for sure one way or the other. Deal?"

"Sure. Let me know soon. Bye." I slide my phone into my pocket and go to find Fury. He's poring over some reports in the conference room upstairs.

"So, any news on when I'll be put in training?" I ask Fury the second I step into his 'office.'

He looks up at me with an incredulous expression. "Probably as soon as you get back from Barton's place." He says, turning back to his reports again.

"Wait, how did you even know about that? Clint didn't even tell me that until just now." Is Fury even real?

"He asked me earlier if he could borrow you for the week. I gave him the all-clear. One of the agents here will give you a ride in the quinjet." Still no expression on his face.

"Thanks. There's something else I wanted to talk to you about." He looks up again. "Pietro's been having headaches and dreams about whatever you did to him. And I found the scar on his head."

Now he does show a smidgen of emotion, in the form of pursing his lips. He flips the folder he was reading closed and stands up at the table.

"I already told you, the exact details are-"

"Classified, I know, but he's my friend and you told me to keep an eye on him. How can I do that if I don't know what to keep an eye out for? What do you expect?"

"I expect you to trust me, Ms. Collins." He puts lots of emphasis on my name. "Do you really expect," There's that word again- "That I would do anything like that if it wasn't necessary?"

"I don't know what to expect." I say. Oh boy. "I hardly know you at all."

"But I know you, " he says, walking around the table and darkening the SmartGlass. "I've known you your entire life. You're just like Stark, always questioning everything." I open my mouth to start talking again but he keeps going. "Don't mistake me, that's both a good and bad thing. It's half the reason you two are so dang smart, because you're always looking for the hidden meanings in things. But when you start looking for those things in people, that's where problems happen, because people rarely live up to your expectations." He unlocks a tablet and hands it to me.

"What is this?" I scroll through the report. Something about a fallen alien, genetics, a blood serum and an underground city.

"This is, well was, Project TAHITI. Designed to be used in the case of a fallen Avenger."

"This is what you did to Pietro." I scroll up again. "Most of these trials had extreme results. These people ended up unstable, or dead in most cases. Plus, who knows how this alien stuff would react with the scepter's effects."

He shakes his head. "The GH.325 was destroyed. It's also obsolete now that we have the Cradle."

"But what actually brought him back? I thought of this last night. The Cradle by itself isn't enough."

"No, it wasn't. There's another component to the procedure. Every one of the problems we faced before could be tied back to the GH.325 serum. My best guess is that he's still using his powers, even though we're all telling him not to. He's not giving himself a chance to recover and it's wearing him down."

"Wanda caught him a few times, but the past few days he's seemed more tired than before."

"So you think I should wipe his memory?"

"No!" I protest.

"Then what do you expect?"

"I expect we're heading into dangerous waters with that word again. Sir."

He actually laughs this time. "I expect you're right, Collins. I'll have Doctor Cho give him another check up, but other than that, there aren't many options available other than what you see here." He gestures to the tablet, and I hand it back to him.

"I told him to go see her last night, but he's stubborn. That's probably why he's avoiding me this morning."

"I'll go threaten him a bit and get him in there. While he's still new and they're still scared of me. You understand that this conversation is to stay between us, don't you?"

"I do." I say. He turns the shading off and we leave the conference room.

Wanda and Pietro are on the catwalk nearby. Their voices are raised and they seem to be fighting about something. He's backed up against the railing and she's coming at him. He says something, she yells something back, and then he falls to the floor.

Fury and I rush over and roll him over. This is too similar to Sokovia for me, far too close for comfort. I can almost expect to see him bleeding again, but he's breathing, semiconscious, but still in rough shape.

I give Fury a pointed glare as I grab Pietro under the arms and start dragging him off towards the infirmary. Wanda takes his other side and we walk like this the whole way, Pietro trying to move but stumbling over his own feet and nearly dragging us down too.

Doctor Cho notices us before we walks in and rushes over to help, taking him from us and putting him on a table. The infirmary turns into a hive of activity, techs running all over the place, forcing Wanda and I back a little while they work. Her breath catches a little and she almost drops to the floor as well. I catch her just in time and set her down in a chair nearby.

"I can't lose him again." She cries out, never taking her eyes away from him.

"We are not going to let that happen." Fury says from the doorway.

Her head whips around to look at him with anger. "I know what you did to him." She snaps.

"I can assure you, Ms. Maximoff, Doctor Cho will be able to fix this." Fury says cautiously.

She stands up straight, holding her chin up as she looks him in the eye. "You won't. I will." With that, she spins on her heels and walks over to Pietro's side, hands starting to get that faint red glow.

She leans in close to his face, just looking at him with her brows pulled together and a pained expression on her face. her hands come up and rest on either side of his face, glow spreading onto him and into her eyes as well.

He takes in a deep, shuddering breath, back arching off the table and his eyes open, glowing red as well. She squeezes her eyes shut tighter and presses down harder on him, holding him down.

The Vision rushes into the room, walking straight through the glass using his phasing powers. "Wanda, stop!" He says, and her eyes fly open and mouth drops with a look of shock.

Then, the world explodes. Slowly, piece by piece, all the matter in the room starts breaking apart into millions of tiny crystals. It starts with Wanda, breaking apart into geometric shards of red, mixing with the blue from Pietro, the yellow lights above, the Vision's red and green body, then it reaches me.

Before my eyes, my hands break apart into pieces that float off into the room. It doesn't hurt. In fact, there's no feeling at all.

Then the world goes white.


	9. Chapter 9

I wake up with the sun shining on my face. I grumble and turn over so I'm facing away from the light, settling back down against Pietro's chest.

He stirs when I start shifting, moving his hand from the curve of my waist up to run through my hair.

"Morning, _srce_." he mumbles, pulling me closer and brushing his lips against my temple, holding me there and tickling my face with his breath.

"Morning." I say, resting my head right against his heartbeat. "Busy day today," I add.

He sighs. "I wish we could just stay here all day."

"Tony's expecting us. He needs the help." Pietro grumbles a little, which I feel more than I hear. "But, a few minutes won't hurt."

"Promise me that after these negotiations are complete we'll take some time off, go somewhere nice. Just us." He says, rolling onto his back and pulling me with him so I'm sprawled out on top of him.

"Absolutely. Anywhere particular in mind?"

"Let's figure it out when we get there."

I smile. "Sounds good to me. All we have to do is get through today." I push myself up and crawl off the bed, kicking the discarded clothes littering the floor into the closet and picking out some new ones for today. I don't put too much care into what I pick out. I'll be getting on a plane and heading to France for tomorrow's Gala later anyway.

Pietro rolls over onto his side and watches me as I pull on my clothes. The way he watches me is like nobody else in the world, like I'm the morning sun and he's been in the dark for a thousand years. The first time he ever looked at me like that was the first time I knew he was the one.

"Are you going to keep staring at me all day or are you going to come get some breakfast?" I say, snapping him out of the moment.

"Oh, right." He says, cheeks reddening. He swings over the side of the bed and ambles over to the drawers, repeating the same procedure I just went through., "Lead the way, _duso_." He says, putting his arm in mine to walk down the stairs from the loft to the open-ceilinged main floor.

I almost don't notice the difference at first. He's so still, so inhuman, like just another embellishment to the apartment, instead of something alive.

But when the red and green man stands up to face us, I definitely notice.

"Who- or what-are you?" Pietro demands, arm tensing around me. "What do you want?"

The man steps closer, shimmering gold cape trailing along behind him. He tilts his head, which has some sort of strange glowing stone in the center of it, studying us closer. "You do not know me." It's not a question.

"How did you get in here?" I ask. "Stark Village has a top of the line security system, on every floor-"

"You must listen to me very carefully." He interrupts. "The world is not as it seems. Wanda has altered reality and changed the past, creating a new timeline of events that I can not accurately predict. What's more, the strain of keeping the illusion up will kill her. We must act quickly, to reset the timeline before any permanent damage is done."

"What do you mean, changed? Nothing has changed. This is the way the world has always been." Pietro responds. "You stay away from my sister." He adds in a more threatening tone.

"I can show you, give you back your memories. You just have to-" A beep sounds from the front door as it opens, security guards streaming inside to surround the intruder. He takes one look at them and glides to the balcony door, walking through and floating off into the sky.

I look at Pietro with a shocked expression, then notice the security alert in his hand. The guards fan out, two carefully inspecting the window where the strange man disappeared, the others assessing the rest of the room, doors, windows, vents, looking for anything out of the ordinary.

Looks like a vacation might not be such a bad idea after all.

I sigh. "Figures something like this would happen, today, of all days. As if there isn't enough to worry about with the Gala tomorrow. Now we'll have to beef up security for the event." I finish walking down the stairs and pick up my tablet that's laying on the kitchen counter, about to log in and start alerting the head of security.

"Excuse me, ma'am." One of the guards says, taking the tablet out of my hand. "I'm afraid I'll have to take this to be checked. You can't use this. Better hand over your phones too. I'll arrange for an extraction unit to take you both to Stark Tower as soon as possible. Kang, please escort them upstairs to gather their things."

One of the guards escorts us up to the bedroom so we can gather our clothes for the trip. Everything else we need is already at Stark Tower. Tony lets us keep a room there, the same way he has a room here.

"We should call Wanda as soon as we get to the Tower." Pietro says as he zips his tux into a garment bag. "My parents too. Make sure that...thing hasn't come to them. And won't."

"Good plan." I say, taking my white dress out of the closet and laying it in a bag as well. "I don't know how I'm going to finish all the prep without my phone, tablet, all my contacts and notes-"

"Hey, hey, calm down." he says, taking my shoulders in his hands and looking me in the eye. I take a deep breath, already calming down at his soothing touch. "We'll make it work, like always."

"You're right." I say, looping my arms around his and running my thumb over the crease of his elbow. "I love you."

"I love you too, my _mischa_." He pulls me into him and gives me a kiss.

"When are you going to tell me what _'mischa'_ means?" I ask when we break apart.

"When the world falls apart." he answers, the same answer he always gives me.

Usually that makes me smile, but today it worries me. "If what that man said is true, that may be sooner than we think."

~A~S~S~E~M~B~L~E~

Within the hour we're walking into the penthouse at Stark Tower, bags in hand and guards riding back down the elevator. Nobody is allowed into Tony's personal space here except his closest friends, even security is told to stay away. Iron Man heads up security for Tony. But only us and a few others know that Iron Man _is_ Tony.

"You made it." Tony says while he walks across the floor to greet us. "Happy is adding more people to the security detail for the Gala and going over extraction plans again. SHIELD is tracking down the intruder as we speak. What can you tell me about him?" Tony asks as he sits down on one end of the sectional couch.

"He wasn't human." I say as I plop down onto the couch next to him. Tony's eyebrows go straight up. "He was red and green, and his voice was strangely mechanical, but familiar. I know I've heard that voice somewhere before. He had a British accent. And he flew away from the top of the building. But the strangest thing was the glowing stone in his head."

"Definitely not human." Tony says, picking up a tablet from the coffee table. "What is he then? One of those genetic deviants? Alien? Artificial?"

"He seemed very artificial, his voice had a computerized tinge to it. But other things seemed very organic in nature. His cape's coloring, for instance. Not a perfect color, but mottled and rough edged. And he mentioned Wanda." I look at Pietro, who dashes for the phone at the mention of his sister's name. "He said she did something to the world, and the universe is collapsing, and it will kill her."

"As far as we know, Wanda isn't capable of anything like that. Is she?" Tony asks.

"Absolutely not. I don't know anyone anything capable of causing the things he mentioned. It's impossible, isn't it?"

"I don't believe anything is truly impossible." Tony says, staring into space. "What we think is impossible is often just beyond our knowledge. People said world peace is impossible, and yet here we are today."

"Do you think this… person was sent to sabotage the Gala?" I ask.

"It's possible, and with this flying ability he certainly could cause a lot of havoc if he chose to, but I just can't see anyone trying to sabotage this. Is that naive of me? The purpose of the Gala isn't public knowledge. I've worked too hard for this for it to slip away now. This is my entire life's work. The climax. This is the end of the line." he stands up. "Nobody is going to take that away now."

"I just want tomorrow to go perfect for you." I say, standing up as well. "You've worked so hard for this. You deserve it."

"Let's just focus on the Gala and solve this after. Security has your description, and there should be video footage coming in soon, so they can keep an eye out. We'll be getting on the plane to Europe soon. There's not much else we can do."

"You're right. I just hate sitting around and waiting in situations like this." I can feel myself tensing up already. Hopefully I don't get a migraine. That's the last thing I want today.

"It's going to be fine, just wait and see." He says, stepping closer and pulling me in for a hug. he holds me tight, rubbing circles on my back, making me feel safe and protected like he always does. Tony's just that kind of person.

Once I've soaked up as much strength as I could, I step into the kitchen where Pietro is still on the phone. He's speaking his native tongue, and I'm not fluent enough to pick up everything he's saying, but I understand enough to know he's speaking to his mother. After he hangs up he sighs, staring at the floor with a worried look.

"What did they say?" I ask.

He's startled by my voice, and he looks tired still. Not sleepy, the way he did first thing this morning, but already tired, worn down and too much weighing down on him. "They haven't talked to her since yesterday. Don't know where she is. She won't answer either of our calls." He runs a nervous hand through his wavy brown hair.

"That's not like her." I say, leaning on the counter next to him. "She always calls, every day, even just for a minute or two."

"I know. That thing better not have done anything to her, or his imagined crisis will be the least of his worries."

"Tony seems confident that SHIELD will find him." I lie. "That's their job. They do it so we won't have to. Maybe we should go to Sokovia after the Gala, for a few days. Find her. Talk everything out."

"Not exactly a romantic getaway, but there's no place I'd rather go. After that, then somewhere nice."

"According to National Geographic, Sokovia is on the rise as one of the safest, cleanest, and most sought after destinations this year."

"All thanks to you and your brother. Nobody ever thought Sokovia would rise to what it is now."

I smile. "He's full of surprises. Think, if he had never moved his clean energy project to Sokovia, we never would have met. Just one little moment changed our lives forever."

"Don't remind me. I know you mean it as a good thing, but it's too easy to imagine if it had never happened. I don't even want to think about a world without you."

My heart swells with love for him, and I rise up on my toes to plant kisses along his jawline. "Ready to go to Paris?"

"Ready, _mon amour_."

I grin. "Your French is terrible."

~A~S~S~E~M~B~L~E~

"See? This trip isn't so bad after all." I say, taking a sip of red wine and looking out at the view. The Eiffel Tower dominates the sky from less than two kilometers away, the restaurant balcony offering an unobstructed view. It's the perfect way to relax after an eight hour flight.

"Is not bad." He says nonchalantly, smirking as he takes a sip of his own glass of wine. "But I thought it was bigger."

I'm about to fire off another sassy remark, but a shadow drops down from the roof onto the balcony and walks towards us. There's a faint yellow glow, and I know even before he steps into the light which illuminates his strange red and green skin, that it's him again.

"How did you find us?" I demand, gripping my glass just a little bit tighter and pressing the button on my phone that will alert Tony of the situation.

"I never lost you. I've been trying to contact Wanda. She's still avoiding me. There's not much time left." His matter-of-fact tone sends chills down my spine.

Pietro stands up and walks to within inches of his face. "You leave my sister alone." He backs off and whispers to me, "We need to find her before he does." I nod.

"She's in the city still, in the tunnels beneath the old fortress. Where Stark's reactor is."

"If she is there, I can have security go find her. They could have her back within a few hours." I whisper to Pietro.

"Yes, but it could be a trap. Maybe he doesn't know exactly where she is and is trying to get us to find her for him."

"I just have a bad feeling, and the sooner we find her, the better. I don't know if we should wait another day to go there ourselves." I see a light go up into the sky from a few blocks away and come towards us. "Here comes Tony now." I say, giving a pointed nod in that direction.

Tony, in his Iron Man suit, drops down onto the balcony with a thud and stands up between us and the man.

"Who are you?" Tony demands.

"I am called The Vision. I'm here to help you, Mr. Stark." My blood runs cold. How...?

Tony opens his face mask and stares at the being. "Okay," He says cautiously. "You say you're here to help, then help me out. Stay away from these two, and stay away from the Gala tomorrow. If you have anything to say, then say it to me."

"The readings you've been picking up, the ripples in space. I know what's causing them. I know how to stop it. But I can't do it alone."

"What readings?" I ask. "Tony?"

"How'd you know about that?" Tony asks, ignoring my question.

"I've been picking them up too. It's the matter in the universe breaking down into ambient energy. You don't realize it, but the world has been changed, creating this alternate reality and replacing the one that should exist."

"And you think Wanda caused this somehow?" Tony asks incredulously.

"She's changed the course of history, so you don't remember anything that happened- or was supposed to happen. Using her enhancements."

"Why would she do that though?" Pietro asks. "Even if she could."

"She didn't mean to, but she doesn't want to fix it either. In my world, the world this is supposed to be, you were killed by Ultron and-"

"Ultron?" Tony asks, stiffening in shock. "How could he be killed by Ultron? The Ultron Initiative will finalize world peace in 90% of the globe."

"Originally, Ultron was an AI that went rogue, not a treaty. Pietro was killed in the battle, then brought back, but it had some other effects. She was trying to stabilize that and instead, changed the past so you were never killed at all. But that caused a chain of events that erased and rewrote major ancillary events going back decades. The strain of keeping up this facade is wearing her down and draining her strength faster than she can recover. It will kill her if she does not let go."

"And what happens if she does?" Tony asks. "Everything, all this, just… disappears?" The man, the Vision, nods. "Do you have any proof to back this up? How come you remember all this stuff and we don't?"

"The world is already trying to bounce back from this interruption. She's resisting it. All she has to do is put it back, and the strain will be gone. If she does not, tears in the fabric of space time will start appearing more rapidly until everything is torn apart and all hope of fixing it is lost. I believe I can remember because of the effects of the mind stone."

"That thing?" Tony asks, looking up at the glowing stone.

"Yes. It is one of the infinity stones, the greatest powers in the universe. Even Wanda cannot erase that. Using it, I can help her and guide her in putting the world back and stabilizing Pietro's mind without these damaging side effects. It is also possible I could trigger your memories withi-" He never gets to finish the sentence. Tony slams his visor shut just before a dozen SHIELD agents flood the balcony and surround the Vision, weapons raised and restraining him.

"Nice chat, but you'll understand if we don't believe you." Tony says.

"You'll know where to find me." The Vision says cryptically, going with the SHIELD agents and offering no resistance whatsoever.


	10. Chapter 10

"Good luck up there." Tony stops fidgeting and looks at me, snapped out of whatever mental moment he was having to respond to my voice.

"Thanks. Any word from the twins?" He picks up his card and shuffles through them, then sticks them in his inside pocket.

"Nothing. I don't like it. I'm getting back on a plane as soon as the Gala is over." I keep thinking it's already been too long, and in an official investigation we'd be looking for her body instead of finding her, but I'd never say that out loud. I can't imagine how devastating it would be for Pietro to lose her, especially with their weird twin connection.

"Good. I'll try to keep it short," He holds up the cards again with a smirk, but then his face darkens. "Keep me updated, will you?"

"I will. See you in a few minutes." I hug him and kiss his cheek for good luck and he walks up the stairs towards the stage. I dart back into the auditorium and stand next to Steve, who's getting a drink.

"Starting?" He asks. I nod. We make our way to the front of the stage. The lights change and the screens around the room come on. Cameras flash all over, the highly anticipated moment finally here, the question answered. What is Tony Stark up to?

Dimly, I notice a few of those flashes are directed in my direction. I'll bet there will be at least a few articles claiming Steve and I are together, especially since Pietro is nowhere near here.

"Well, here we are." Tony says, and the noise slowly dies down. "It's been, what, two months since the invitations were sent out? You've all been very patient. I think it's time you find out what you've been waiting for." There's another massive round of applause. Tony himself is beaming, just as excited as the rest of the world for this moment.

"I've been thinking a lot about legacies. What does it take to give your life meaning? This is something my dad wondered a lot too. We all remember him. Howard Stark. I say his name, what's the first thing you think of? He was the world's number-one weapons contractor. But was it enough? He wanted to end war. I never understood how fueling a conflict helps end the conflict. When he died, what did it amount to? War didn't stop with his death.

"Several years ago, while I was working on the arc reactor technology, I came across some of his old research. The arc reactor was originally a stepping stone to creating a new element that held the key to clean energy. This is his true legacy, and the one I chose to continue working on. Most people thought I was crazy when I shut down the weapons division of Stark Industries. Here's this kid, the youngest Fortune 500 C.E.O. ever, and the first thing he does is shut down the highest grossing division in the company. Seems like a recipe for disaster.

"I had my doubts too. But I knew it was the right thing to do. Because not only did I inherit the responsibility of running a company, I had to raise my sister too. I didn't sleep much those first few weeks, but I had plenty of time to think. She was going to feel the loss of our parents even more than I did, so what could I do to ease that and ensure her a future? Creating more weapons wasn't the answer. Weapons are dependant on their owners for direction. But clean energy- now that's something that could really make a difference.

"It took a long time, but progress was made. What started in Sokovia, one small city in a small country, expanded to over 40 cities wordwide, and the number is still climbing. Greenhouse gas emissions decreased dramatically within the first few years. The cost of energy in general lowered, both clean energy and fossil fuels, which big business didn't appreciate. I found that out when I was dragged out of my car into a cave in Afghanistan. I almost gave up. Thought I didn't make as much of a difference as I thought I did.

"Once I got back, I started looking into other ways to branch out. Clean energy by itself wouldn't leave the kind of legacy I want to leave. More change is needed. The roadblock I faced now is figuring out how to convince everyone else of this. It would take something big to motivate this kind of change, as widespread as it needed to be. I didn't even have to do anything with that part of it. Aliens started pouring out of the sky in New York and that was the push the world needed. When that wormhole opened, suddenly there were bigger fish to fry. We can't afford to be fighting each other when threats like that lurk just inside the shadows.

"We needed Ultron. Sydney was like most kids, scared of the imaginary monsters in her closet and under her bed. Being an adult, _I_ knew there was nothing there, but the hard part was convincing her of that. That's how Ultron was created. I made up this story of a guardian that watched over her at night. In the story, Ultron was tasked with defeating the monster that came out at night. So he set traps in her room to catch the monster, and in the morning, inside the trap, was this little thing." He pulls out a little stuffed sock monster, I didn't even know he still had it. "Not as scary as she thought. This little monster was scared too, lost and alone. After that, she wasn't scared of the monsters anymore. She couldn't wait to wake up in the morning and see what kind of new friend she could make that day. It's just a story, but the principle of it got me thinking. If people stopped being so afraid of each other and worked together instead of against each other, maybe the monsters in the world wouldn't be such a big deal anymore.

"We need an Ultron. I'm here to give it to you. The first step to ending the fight begins in each one of us. Look past the prejudices, see past the monsters to the allies beneath. But here to help you, a new international diplomatic force designed to act as this world's guardian angels, led by the Avengers with the ultimate goal of protecting this world from threats inside and out. Ladies and Gentlemen, to world peace!"

A sharp shot rings out over the applause and Tony crumples to the floor of the stage. The applause dies as quickly as it started, but I only notice this in passing. There is only one thought in my mind- getting to Tony as fast as my high-heel clad feet can take me. Even before I collapse at his side I know it's over. He's not moving, and there's a round hole in the center of his forehead, seeping blood and locking his eyes in a never-ending stare. Chills run down my spine as I lay my hand on his shoulder, erupting into a sob and I collapse over his body, just holding him there and wishing for nothing more than to have him back again.

I never knew most of the things he said in his speech until now. I knew the purpose of the Ultron Initiative, but none of the history and backstory he just poured out not five minutes before. Why must life be so cruel, to give him this one shining moment and then end it like that?

My only consolation was that it was quick. He never even knew what hit him. But it's not enough.

Someone grabs me under the arms and drags me away. I start sobbing harder, fighting and trying to get back to him, but then SHIELD agents swarm the stage with guns in hand, sweeping the area and locking everything down.

This is exactly what Tony was fighting against. I see movement in the corner of my eye. Steve is tearing across the ballroom floor, crashing through a door that leads up to a second floor runway spanning the entire side of the building. Of course. Whoever shot him still has to be close by. I scan the upper levels and see a movement, a shadow, running along the balcony towards this side of the building. I push the SHIELD agent away from me and run towards the stairs on this side. Maybe if I run fast enough I can cut the attacker off and give Steve a chance to catch him.

I'm just a little too late. I forgot there was a skywalk connecting this building to the next one over. The shadow is fast running down the corner by the time I reach the top of the stairs. Steve wheels around the corner just in front of me, letting off a quick shot from the handgun he picked up. The shadow crumples to the ground with a thud.

Steve's breathily heavily, face hot with anger as he storms over to the downed figure, putting two more bullets into his chest before kneeling at his side and ripping of the mask covering the lower half of his face. He almost falls over when he does, and I gasp and cover my mouth.

I know this face. It can't be possible, but he's right here in front of me.

Another two shots go out, and I scream and cover my ears, backing up a few paces, but no agonizing pain tears through my body. Instead, Steve lets out a groan and clutches his chest, slumping over to the floor and grasping for his handgun. It's kicked away from him and the second shadow fires another shot, into the side of his head and stopping all further movement.

She collapses at the assassin's side now, sobbing and holding him in a way identical to the way I did with Tony just moments before. She rips her mask off and her long brown hair falls over her shoulders, trailing in the blood seeping into the floor as she lays her face on his chest and continues crying.

I'm frozen in place, too overwhelmed by this turn of events to do anything. Should I run now? Go for the gun and take her out? I'm not as skilled as Steve. I doubt I could take her down if I tried.

My gaze shifts to his body, sprawled on his side in a pool of blood, gaze locked on the friend he thought died long ago. His arm reaches across the floor, almost touching fingers with the metal arm clenched into a fist.

A shuddering gasp goes through me, and the woman's acidic green gaze locks onto me. She stands up and raises her handgun at me, clicking the safety off and taking aim. I step back further, but there's nowhere to run. I can't make it back to the stairs. I close my eyes and wait for the end.

The shot goes out and I feel a touch on my shoulder, and something like water rippling through my body, but no pain whatsoever. I open my eyes and see a familiar red and green figure before me, one hand on my shoulder and the other outstretched towards the femme fatale. A yellow blast goes out and hits her in the face, sending her spinning away and hitting the ground.

I gasp and writhe away from his hand, but he steps closer and scoops me into his arms, stepping off the catwalk into the sky and floating away, setting down on another rooftop several blocks away.

I have now officially reached my limit, several times over. As soon as he sets me down I rush away from him, long bloodstained dress betraying me and getting caught under my shoes, making me fall to my hands and knees.

I start sobbing so hard I couldn't have walked anyway, eyes fixated on the red liquid that should have stayed within Tony's body.

"Why did he have to die?" I choke out, trying to rub some of the blood off my hands.

The Vision sits down next to me. "He didn't. He shouldn't have. We can still save him, but we must act quickly. Are you ready to listen now?" Something about his expression, the gravity in his voice- I could almost believe him.

"How?" If there's any chance, I have to take it. What is there left to lose?

"Restoring history to its natural course means the Gala never existed, and therefore everyone that died tonight will still be alive. We should leave before more agents arrive and that assassin wakes up. It's only a matter of time before she comes for you again."

"She's still alive?" I ask.

"Merely stunned. There's been too much bloodshed this night. We must get to Sokovia as soon as possible." He pulls me to my feet and picks me up again, walking to the edge of the rooftop.

"You should keep your eyes closed while we're traveling." He says, floating higher and higher into the sky until Paris looks like a map beneath us.

"Yeah, good one. I still don't trust you." the air starts getting colder the higher up we get.

"The atmosphere will continue to thin the higher we get. I will stay low enough that you will be able to breathe without difficulty, but the light levels increase the risk of damage to your eyes and skin."

"Right… closing my eyes. How can you do all this, anyway?"

"I am an android. Artificial. Would you like me to restore your memories?"

"What if I don't like what I remember?"

The silence stretches on and I wonder if he even heard me. But finally he answers. "I'm afraid I don't know how to answer that question."

"You said Pietro had died, and Ultron is really a homicidal glitching robot. If it wasn't for the fact that Tony and Steve were just killed, why would I want to change things back to how they were?"

"That _is_ a valid question." He says, producing a low humming sound before he continues. "I believe that is what Wanda was trying to accomplish in changing things the way she did. Her actions were motivated with the best of intentions, I have no doubt. But, it is a simple matter of physics."

"Physics? You lost me there."

"Newton's Third Law of Motion. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. For all the good in the world, there is something bad to offset it. Wanda upset the balance of good, and now the bad is pushing back even harder."

"So what you're saying is that Tony's work wouldn't have amounted to anything anyway. World peace is inachievable."

"Not necessarily. Think of the Battle of New York. A common threat bringing everyone together. Perhaps what the world is lacking is a common goal. Even if there is never a day when goodness is the prevailing quality in the universe, you humans have a lot to learn and grow from the experience."

"Thanks… I think. So tell me again, how exactly is Wanda doing all of this?"

"She and her brother were experimented on and certain dormant abilities deep within their genetic code were unlocked. The exact nature of her power is… difficult to explain, and is often referred to in the shorthand as hexes, although having no apparent connection to magic. I believe it to be a form of energy manipulation. She also shows some psychic abilities."

"And Pietro? He doesn't have powers. Not that I know of." I would have noticed if he had superpowers. Wouldn't I?

"She's changed him in this universe. Or, to be more precise, he was never changed. He's fast, capable of breaking the sound barrier and only appearing as a blur blur. His-" The Vision fell silent, and the steady movement of the air stopped with him.

"What's going on?" I ask, almost forgetting to keep my eyes closed.

"The universe is collapsing much faster than I had anticipated." the Vision says in a terse whisper that fills me with dread.

"Can I look?" I ask, hushing my voice as well.

"For a moment." I open my eyes and take in the wide open night sky, the earth stretched out far below, and the stars which from this elevation appear far brighter than I have ever seen before. But there's a heaviness to the sky that I feel before I see. I don't even feel it in the sense that it's a tangible thing, more like the sensation of being watched even when you can't see the person watching you. You don't see it, but you know it's there.

When I do see it, the tingles on my skin become even more pronounced. There's something in the sky, lines spreading out like shattered glass against the stars beyond. The sky seems to shake and vibrate with the impact, and slowly the cracks widen and spread until the cracks become a hole.

Some sort of glow starts falling out of the hole, like a waterfall of starlight falling from the heavens. It would be beautiful, but the feeling of fear going through me tells me otherwise. The substance stops in midair and starts collecting into one ever-shifting mass, glowing and changing colors and turning dark and then back to light, oscillating in midair and sending out some sort of vibration that grows in intensity as the mass becomes bigger.

Vision's grip around me tightens, the only warning I get before he starts rushing towards the ground, weaving around mountains and trees at a dizzying pace. The growl in the sky turns to a lower pitch when he does, the strange crack in the sky directly above our heads.

He's flying much faster than before, all I see now are blurs as he performs hairpin turns and twists in the maze of the earth. It's only been a few seconds, but once the glowing mass starts shooting out after us, gaining speed and growing closer, crashing into rock and trees and leaving everything it touches a smoking mass behind it, I realize he acted just in time.

Whatever this thing is, it's bad news.

It seems… _alive_.

And it's coming for us.

It gets closer and closer, lacking Vision's finesse in flying but able to plow through any obstacle without losing momentum. What was once hundreds of meters away becomes dozens, then ten, then five. The ominous glow is blinding now, and I can feel the hairs on my face tingle with the energy it's emitting. It feels like fire, like I would burn to ashes if it were to get any closer to me.

Vision's body tenses and then I feel a ripple go through me, and the entire world goes black except for the faint yellow glow of the stone within the android's head.

"Where are we? What's happening?" I ask, my voice sounding strange, like I'm speaking underwater. Any movements is difficult, and I have to take slow, deep breaths.

"The entity was overtaking us, so I phased inside the mountain. We are now beneath the earth's surface, protected by billions of tons of rock on all sides. At the very least, it will slow the being down, allowing us a chance to escape."

"We're… _inside_ a mountain? How can you do that? How can we breathe? Is this why everything feels like I'm moving through molasses?"

"One of my many abilities includes being able to change my density and the density of anything I touch, allowing myself to increase density, becoming stronger, or as in this case, decrease density, to the point of passing through solid matter. You are correct in concluding that this is why you have trouble moving, what you are experiencing is the resistance of the matter around you as we pass through it. I believe it will be safer if we continue our journey in this fashion. Sokovia is not far away now. You may want to hold on."

I hold on tighter as we sink even lower into the ground, then our direction changes, it feels almost the same as flying, just with a little more resistance.

"What was that thing?" I ask.

"I am uncertain, but the most plausible conclusion is that it is a being from beyond our universe."

"How can it be from beyond the universe? There's nothing beyond the universe." Says the person currently flying underground with a red and green robot who says her best friend rewrote the entire universe. "Is it?"

"As I said, it is the most likely conclusion. The crack is a tear in the fabric of spacetime, a hole in the universe. And the creature came through the crack. Alternatively, the crack could be a breach between two points in this universe, but the result is the same either way: we don't know what it is, only that it doesn't belong here and it poses a threat." He changes direction again and we fly straight up. The heavy feeling goes away and I can see again. We are on the streets of Sokovia, just a few blocks away from the twins' parents house.

He sets me down on the ground and I stand on my own, a little stiff from the awkward position of being held for the last few hours. Then I remember the creature and turn in a circle, examining the horizon and expecting a glowing blob to jump out at any moment, but for the time being it seems we have escaped.

"We should hurry and find Wanda before any more damage is done."

I nod. "I should go get Pietro first and catch him up on what's happened. But let me do the talking, okay? He isn't exactly fond of you after what happened the last time."

"Whatever you say."

The house isn't far, it only takes a minute or so to walk there, but in high heels that minute feels like a lifetime. As I round the corner onto their street I pause and look up the hill towards Stark Industries. The blue glow from the arc reactor shines as it always does, the brightest beacon in the city, a symbol of hope to all that see it.

Or it was, anyway. Now? Nothing. The warm yellow light leaking through the windows of the house is far more enticing. There, I know I still have people to rely on, to trust, a family I love.

The door opens while I'm still knocking. Pietro is there, rushing through the door and pulling me into him, holding me like he'll never let go.

"Oh, _mischa_ , you made it." he says, moving side to side ever so slightly as we stand there together. "We've been watching the reports, and I thought- your dress, are you injured?" he asks, taking a handful of the fabric and holding it out for examination.

"I'm fine," I smile, feeling bittersweet. "We came here as soon as it happened. Pietro," I say, turning serious and taking his hands in mine. "We need to find Wanda."

"Wanda? She went to the store at the end of the street to pick up some cocoa. She knows it's your favourite, and wanted to have some ready in case you showed up. Who's this?" He asks, furrowing his brows and looking past me at the Vision.

"What do you mean, 'who's this'?" I ask, not comprehending at first.

"This- this thing. What exactly are you?" None of the hostility Pietro displayed before is evident now.

"You don't remember?" I ask, feeling of worry growing in me. If he doesn't remember, and Wanda isn't here-

"Should I remember?"


	11. Chapter 11

"Should I remember?" He asks, tilting his head in confusion.

"Sydney? Is that you?" His mother asks, stepping out of the house onto the porch. She sighs when she sees me then puts her arms around me and holds me tight. "We've been so worried." She says, running her hand along my hair. "You all come inside, and I'll get you some clean clothes." She says, eyeing my bloodstained skirt. "You too… whoever you are." She adds to Vision as an afterthought.

"Thanks, Mum." I say, using the term I'd adopted not long after I'd met Marya. Perhaps it's the lack of a mother figure in my own life that led me to adopt the Maximoffs with such reckless abandon. In any case, they've never treated me as anything other than a member of the family.

"Go get in the shower. You can tell us what happened when you get out." Marya says once everyone is inside and the door closed behind us.

I shake my head. "There's no time. We need to find Wanda."

"Is she alright?" Pietro's father, Django asks, standing up from his chair. He and Pietro are the spit and image of each other. Marya has shown me photos of her husband when he was younger, and I had a hard time spotting the difference.

One of their closest similarities is their protectiveness of Wanda. How am I supposed to explain what's going on to them? Surprise, your daughter and sister blew up the universe. You're actually dead.

"A lot's happened tonight." I say, unable to resist looking down at the bloodstain yet again.

"She's safe, though?"

"Yeah," I nod. Marya gives me some clean clothes and guides me to Wanda's room, offering a reassuring smile as she closes the door behind me. The jeans and shirt I put on must belong to Wanda, but they feel much better than the dress I had on.

Just as I finish pulling the shirt on, there's a knock at the door. I turn to see it open a crack and Pietro steps through quickly, shutting the door with barely a sound behind him. He's holding something over his arm, and I smile to see it's his favourite hoodie. He drapes it over my shoulders and I pull it tighter around me, the warm fabric making me realize just how cold I was after flying across the continent in a strapless dress.

"You're freezing," He says, rubbing his hands on my cold arms to warm me up. "How did you get here so fast, anyway?"

"Vision brought me."

"That's that guy out there?" He asks.

"How do you not remember who he is? we've already met him several times." Something's very wrong.

" _Srce_ , I don't."

"When did you find Wanda? You should have called when you found her." I say, stepping back a few paces.

He looks at me with concern when I step away from him so abruptly. "What's going on with you? Nothing you're saying makes any sense. Are you sure you're not injured? Did you hit your head or something? Do you need to go to the hospital?"

"What happened today? From your perspective?"

He furrows his eyebrows. "I've spent the whole day here with my family, watching the Gala broadcast. Then when… when things went wrong, we waited for you to get here. That's it."

I shake my head. I had hoped that Vision was just a nutcase and things would still be okay, but now I know for sure Wanda has done something. _Changed_ things. And she's done it again.

"That's not what I remember," I say turning away from him and peeking out the window for any sign of the crack in the sky. "Two days ago, Vision broke into our apartment and told us Wanda was missing and that we needed to find her. We came here last night and looked for her for hours, then I went back to Paris for the Gala. You stayed behind to keep looking for her. That was this afternoon."

"None of that happened," He insists, stepping closer to me. "I just saw Wanda a few minutes before you got here." She must have known we were coming. It's all true.

"It did," I say. "I remember it clear as day. Ask the Vision, he can make you remember it. There's something else. Supposedly, this is an altered reality and not how the world is supposed to be."

Pietro's mouth falls open. "You need to go to the hospital." He says, stepping closer to me again.

"No, just- wait, let me finish, okay? The world got changed, and the stress of that is tearing the universe apart. It's already started happening. Tony, Steve- they weren't supposed to die. And now there's a crack in the sky and something came through it."

"You realize how this sounds, don't you?" He asks.

"I didn't believe it either at first. But holes in the sky are not normal events. You remember what happened last time, in New York. This is different than that. It's worse. We need to go find Wanda, now, and then change things back before any permanent damage is done."

"It's been a really crazy day," He says, sitting on the edge of the bed. "Everything that happened… and _Tony_ …"

"Steve too," I say, sitting on the edge of the bed next to him. "I saw it happen, right in front of me. I almost was killed too."

"A traumatic event like that, you know… I'm just saying, maybe you should get some sleep first and then in the morning-"

"What? No," I say, standing up and glaring at him. "This is something much more important than any one of us. You should know that. You used to understand-" Flashes of images go through my mind, of an army of robots, the city floating through the sky, a fusillage of bullets raining down on an even faster blue blur.

That's the world I'm shoving him back into for the sake of the rest of the world. Now I understand why Wanda did this in the first place. But one person does not justify sacrificing the entire world. Besides, if the universe falls apart, he won't survive anyway.

"Sydney? What's wrong?" He asks in a soft voice, standing right in front of me now. It's painful to look at him, knowing what has to be done. Brown hair and eyes replaced by silver and blue, and a different blood stain covering my clothes.

The front door closes with a loud thump and muffled voices start raising in volume. One of the voices in particular stands out to me.

"Wanda," I say, rushing out of her room and into the living area where she stands backed against the door.

"I can make this work, just give me another chance." She says, pressed up against the door. Her eyes are dark and she looks completely bushed.

"The world is too unstable. You can't control this." The Vision says, approaching her with his palms up, in a careful and deliberate way.

She looks towards Pietro and I with a haunted expression in her eyes, then she fumbles with the door handle and rushes back out into the street. The Vision follows her with Pietro and I close behind.

"Wanda, stop," The Vision calls after her. "I'll help you fix it. No one else has to get hurt."

"Leave me alone!" She yells, a burst of red light jumping out of her hands towards him. he deflects it easily, but I stop dead in my tracks. This is not the Wanda I know. "I can't let him die." She cries out again, sending more assaults towards the Vision as she almost trips over her own feet.

"He won't. I'll help you stabilize the effects, but you have to put things back first." She stops running now and stands still in the middle of the street, twirling her hands around in red ribbons of light. Pietro and I start catching up but I pull him back before he can get too close to them. I don't want to interrupt this. Vision seems so close to getting through to her, and I don't want to risk compromising that.

But then I see the glow in the sky behind the building. "Move!" I yell to Pietro, shoving him towards an alley nearby. Vision whirls around to look at us in alarm, then back to the sky, grabbing Wanda and flying off to an alley on the other side of the street. I pull Pietro behind a dumpster, looking between it and the building for the creature to appear. How did it find us? Did it track the Vision and I here? Did Wanda's strange 'magic' alert it somehow?

The wind starts whipping around so fast it seems as if the air is screaming. It's rushing towards the factory, the ground rumbling almost as if-

Everything goes silent. I can no longer hear the wind, even though it is still moving, but in the opposite direction. The rumble starts again, but more intense, like an earthquake. Cracks appear in the building and bricks start falling all over the place. I press myself closer against the side of the building, and Pietro pulls a discarded box over us, offering little in the way of protection but enough to stop us from being smashed in the head.

A shockwave goes out, so intense that my chest feels heavy and I have a hard time breathing. The force shatters even more of the buildings around us, ripping up flowers and pressing trees flat against the ground as well.

Then the sound comes back. It comes back the same way a wave crashes in, a thunderous force so strong you might understand why ancient cultures viewed natural forces as gods.

"What's going on?" Pietro asks, lowering the cardboard shield and looking at the alley. Or, what once was the alley. The building behind has been torn to pieces, and the further out I look the worse it is. For miles all around, all I see is rubble and dust.

"Wanda, you have to stop _now_." Vision says, both of them covered in ash and dust, stumbling out into what used to be the street.

Wanda shows no sign of having heard him at first, looking around at the city with a mixture of awe and horror. She ever so slightly shakes her head. "I… I did. This wasn't me."

Another unearthly screech goes out and the creature lashes out again, jumping out from behind rubble at Wanda and Vision. Wanda brings her hands up and projects energy at it, but it only stuns it. Vision pushes Wanda out of the way and the creature lands on him, stretching out and sticking to him like glue. He reaches up and tries to pry it off, but as soon as his hand gets close the glow envelops that too, trapping him like flypaper. A whirring sound comes from one of them, and Vision falls to his knees, blue eyes flickering as he tries to fight this assault.

Wanda lashes out again, sending volley after volley of energy at the creature, until it lets go of the android and hovers in midair, seeming to coil up like it's about to spring. She sends one more assault at it, a yellow blast coming from Vision at the same time, turning the creature into a cloud of glitter-like particles floating to the ground.

I rush out into the street and look at the factory. The creature must have compromised the arc reactor, but it shouldn't have been powerful enough to create all of this. It could have leveled the city, for sure, but not the entire landscape as far as the eye can see.

"Wanda-" I start, but my attention is drawn by the whir of engines overhead. Five quinjets go by, setting down in the rubble near where the square was. Good, they can start helping with the relief efforts. There must be some survivors, besides us. The rear hatches open and figures in black come pouring out, dozens of them. I raise my hand and wave towards them. They see me.

As they start running closer, I can make out more details. They look like they're wearing SHIELD uniforms. I'm thankful for that. SHIELD will have the resources necessary to clean this up.

Then I notice the guns. More importantly, I notice their guns are raised up in a ready position. Seems like a bit of overkill, but-

Another figure is running along behind them, shorter, feminine, and not following a group. Her long brown hair trails behind her as she runs. She also has a gun raised. Her gun is pointed at me.

I throw myself to the side, falling to the ground as a bullet goes whizzing past. I get up and run in an erratic, zigzag pattern towards the twins and the still downed android. Wanda whips around as the bullets become more intense, raising a red barrier between us and them.

"Go! I'll hold them off." She says, wavering under the onslaught of gunfire. She's weakening, and fast. I try to drag the Vision into the nearby alley, but as soon as I touch him his eyes snap open and he springs to his feet, wrapping a hand around my throat.

Pietro lunges from the side but the Vision raises his hand towards him and Pietro stops in his tracks. "Don't," The android says, in a changed, gravelly voice. His face has changed too, blue eyes now glowing red and once placid face now murderous.

"Vish-" I try to choke out.

The android scoffs. "Vision? Pathetic. The Vision is gone. Now-" His face changes, eyes fixed on something behind me. He drops me and I fall to the ground, struggling to breathe again. Pietro runs closer and helps me up, guiding me into the nearby alley. Before I lose sight, I look back to see what caught Vision's attention. There's another crack forming, right in the middle of the street.

Wanda yells something at us and runs into the alley behind us, dodging the bullets that now roam free. "It's blocked," She says, stopping at the corner of the building and peeking around the corner at the HYDRA agents. "The building collapsed. It's a dead end."

"But that means we're trapped here." Pietro says, letting go of me and rushing down the alleyway. I stumble along after him. The alleyway _is_ blocked.

"Maybe we can go through the buildings."

"They could collapse on us. It's too dangerous." I scan the rooftops, catching my eye on a patch of shadow in one of the upper rooms. Somehow I just know what it is, and I dive to the side just before a shot goes out. It's her, the assassin. She must have circled around while the other agents came at us head on.

I start running back towards the street. The alley is a kill box, and she has the high ground. Pietro is hot on my heels as I make a dead run back to where Wanda is crouched at the entrance of the alleyway. Just before I run into the street I see the look of horror on her face and skid to a stop.

The crack widens, and through it steps another being. Not like the last one, an indeterminate mass of energy and chaos. This one is more human. I should say humanoid, because he's definitely not human. Far taller than any human, he's also built like a tank, and has purplish ridged skin. Definitely not human.

The Vision hovers slightly in the air, just a few inches below eye level of this newcomer. He narrows his eyes and I see the stone in his head start to light up, but then the purple being raises his hand and the Vision lets out a gasp of pain. Sparks start flying everywhere and his artificial body shudders as the air around his face seems to ripple and convulse.

The stone is ripped from his face, and he falls to the ground with a thud. His eyes are no longer red, or blue, or any color. He's still and lifeless, stripped of the object that his existence depended on.

Wanda gasps and covers her mouth, shrinking back further into the alley. If she created all of this, even by mistake, and she still wasn't powerful enough to erase the Vision when this first happened, then this guy is bad news.

The assassin fires her weapon and hits me square in the chest. No physical pain I have ever felt compares to this. I collapse to the ground and try to breathe, but it's too much pain. My chest feels heavy and all I can manage is a cough that sprays blood all over the dust I'm lying in. My lungs must be filling up with blood. My hand reaches up for the source of this agony, and slides right off my clothes, red with blood.

"No, no, no," Pietro says over and over. "Zašto?" He yells at the building the assassin shot from. "Само не она. Молим вас, не она." He pulls me closer to him and sits in the bloodstained rubble just holding me. "Hang on, _mischa_. Just hang on."

The chaos caught the attention of Vision's destroyer, and he starts walking towards the alley, raising the hand wearing the gauntlet covered in glowing stones.

This will be the end.

"What does it mean?" I choke out, looking at Pietro.

"Hm?" he asks.

"Mischa, what is it? You always said you'd tell me when the world ends. I think this is it."

This breaks him even more, but he doesn't deny it. "Closest translation, 'lit-" A purple blast goes out from the gauntlet, hitting him in the back and sending him sprawling over me with his neck resting at an unnatural angle.

I try to scream but it just comes out strangled, filling my lungs with more blood that I start coughing up again. The strange being smiles like it's the most amusing thing in the world, then turns to Wanda. She's curled into a ball with her hands over her ears and her eyes clenched shut, not even looking at the doom approaching her.

I want to get up and destroy him, put all the anger and pain I have in me into him for so callously taking lives in this manner, and enjoying it. But I'm fading out fast and I can't even move my hand. He raises the gauntlet, faint purple glow emanating from the golden metal, then the light fractures into thousands of tiny shards and drifts upwards into the sky. He looks at his hand in confusion as the rest of the colors break apart and fade away as well, then him, then Wanda in a cloud of red, Pietro shattering into blue, and the world fading to white.

"Wanda, stop!" The Vision yells. His eyes are wide, like he's afraid. The entire room stops to stare at him.

"I-" Wanda starts, looking down at her hands and then backing away from Pietro. She shakes her head ever so slightly as she does. What on earth is going on?

"You can't fix this alone," The Vision says, closing the distance between him and Wanda and taking her hands. She looks up at him with a pained expression. "I'll help you."

"Now, hold on-" Fury starts, drawing the gaze of both people.

"Wanda is right, Director. It would be best if you leave Pietro alone in the future." Vision says with the most ice I have ever heard in his voice. Huh, so the android _is_ capable of a wide variety of emotions. Fury raises his eyebrows at Vision's imperious tone. He's not used to being talked to like that. I have to run my head away and hide my face with my hand because I can't control the smirk that comes over my face.

"We need to act quickly." The Vision says, stepping to Pietro's side. Wanda stands across from him. They make eye contact and hold it for a long time, then she nods. Almost like they're having a conversation in their heads. It wouldn't surprise me. Her hands travel back down to Pietro's face, glowing red again. But she seems calmer before, and even her hexes seem to reflect that, the patterns they make in the air more swirling and less jagged than before.

At the same time, the Vision leans in, his infinity stone glowing as well. Just like Wanda's powers, it seems softer and more broad, not at all like the concentrated beam he used against Ultron.

Pietro, even in his unconscious state, seems to relax too. He stops tossing about and his clenched fists relax until he lies limp on the table. His breathing is even and heavy, like he's in a very deep sleep. Wanda's hexes vanish and she stands up straight, but her concentration never leaves her brother. Vision, too, straightens, but he watches Wanda instead. She smiles, that smile she only gives to Pietro, full of love and warmth.

"What did you do?" Doctor Cho asks, looking at the equipment that doesn't know what to make of the strange energy in the room.

"Erased his memory. Everything between the battle and now. The experience of being brought back to life is too traumatic for his mind to comprehend. He must never know what truly happened. It is against my moral code to lie, but in this case his life depends on it. So to do so will accomplish good."

"We'll need to tell the others too." Wanda says.

Fury nods. "I'll call a conference so we can discuss the situation. I expect more of an explanation on what just happened. Five minutes, people."

Wanda and Vision follow Fury to the conference room, and Doctor Cho is close behind. I hang back for a moment, thinking about what just happened. I know it's for the best, and it had to be done, but the situation is unsettling nonetheless. I can't place why at first. Is it the fact that Wanda and Vision are capable of rewriting a person's entire mind? I knew that, and it never bothered me before. Do I doubt my ability to keep this secret? Yes, but more than that. I'm afraid I'll slip up and say something I shouldn't. Pietro and I spent a lot of time together in a few short days. That's the real problem, I realize. Not just that I'll have to be careful of what I say and not refer to anything he doesn't remember telling me, but that he won't remember either. I've lost what little friendship we were able to build.

I turn away to walk to the conference room, but a hand catches mine and holds me back. I look back and see Pietro looking at me, blinking like he's having trouble focusing his eyes.

"Am I high? I feel really high." He mumbles. "What happened? Did we win?"

I fake a smile. "We won. Try to go back to sleep. I'll get Doctor Cho and she can explain everything." Or at least, she can tell you the lie. Once we decide what the lie is.

"Okay," he mumbles, dropping his hand. "Wait," He says just before I walk out the door. "Clint and Costel..?"

At first I don't know what he's talking about, then I realize that the last thing he remembers is saving Clint at the end of the battle. I nod. "They're fine. Everyone's fine."

"Good," he says.

This time, I smile for real.


	12. Chapter 115

The duffel bag slides off my shoulder and hits the floor with a thump. The pilot doesn't even hear it from the cockpit, too busy firing up the engines of the quinjet to notice.

I'm happy to be going to the Bartons' house for the week. It will be a welcome change from the training facility, not that I should be tired of the rigorous training the Avengers are going through, seeing as I still have yet to start. Fury says I can start as soon as I get back, as long as I don't hurt myself again while I'm at the homestead.

A whoosh of air goes by and I cautiously open one eye. Just as I feared, Pietro is in the quinjet. I open the other eye and stand up, furrowing my brow when I see him set down a bag nearly identical to my own.

He looks at me with a mirror of my own emotion, brow furrowed and looking quite puzzled. "What are you doing here?" He asks. He sounds sincere.

"I'm going to Clint's for the week," I say. "I thought you would have heard that by now."

"But… _I'm_ going to his house for the week." He says. My stomach tightens. "To babysit while they visit his wife's parents?"

"When exactly did you find out about this?" I ask icily.

"Couple days ago. He called one morning and asked if I could come visit so I could meet his family, and also stay with the two older ones for the week. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, you know, because he asked me the exact same thing. Just about, anyway." This must have been the plan from the beginning. Clint called me the morning Vision and Wanda erased Pietro's memory. They must have talked to him after that. Right?

"I do believe we have been set up." He says, crossing his arms and staring at something outside the quinjet. I turn to see Wanda standing in the launch bay, delicately wiggling her fingers at us with a smirk on her face, the last thing I see before the rear hatch closes and the jet gets ready for takeoff.

I swear I can hear her laughter in my head.

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A/N: So sorry I haven't updated for so long! I was housesitting for a week and now I'm at my friend's for a month, and my laptop is about ready to die. For good. But this is a little preview of the next few chapters and I hope you guys like what I have in store!


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